


Muddy Love (a Love Bug fic with several twists)

by iridania



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Bugs & Insects, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Giant Spiders, Idiots in Love, King of Pouts! Keith, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Lance (Voltron), POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 03, Pre-Season/Series 04, Team Bonding, love bug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-25 20:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridania/pseuds/iridania
Summary: Post season 3 canon AU. Keith gets bitten by a Love Bug; his feelings for Lance complicate things.OR: Keith fights giant spiders, bonds with his fellow Paladins and gets down the road of love and regret. (So much regret.)





	1. -Don’t let the Love Bugs bite-

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neera (neerapen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neerapen/gifts).



> 1 - Written before season 4 aired, but already sort-of-AU after season 3. I took several liberties with Altean tech here (i.e. I made stuff up :D)  
> 2 - This started as a short fictlet for [The Nee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/neerapen), who accidentally gave me a Very Evil prompt (“I like Love Bug fics!”). 35k+ words and a lot of her favorite tropes later, this is officially the longest fic I’ve ever written. I hope you have fun reading it :)  
> 3 - The Nee was kind enough to beta her own (very belated) birthday present. All remaining mistakes are mine.

The planet was cold, dark and wet. It had no permanent population and no official name, and Keith hated it with every fiber of his half-breed being. After thirteen hours of rain, wind and the occasional burst of sunshine that made everything smell like rotten fruit, he started calling it The Mud Planet (‘Capital letters and all,’ as Lance would say).

Mud stained their helmets and tried to crawl inside their armors, like it had a will of its own. But it wasn’t for the dirt and the slime that the Paladins of Voltron went there. It was for the bugs.

“I think I’ve found another one!”

Keith slashed another vine and used his free hand to move a giant leaf out of the way. The Forest (again: ‘Capital letters and all’) looked like some kind of bluish alien jungle. But instead of trees, there were just twisty-looking creepers that had taken root somewhere deep inside the planet, growing into shrubs and bushes that now made it impossible to see the sky. Keith wasn’t sure where the dim light reaching them came from; maybe there were small openings at the top - maybe something had created them.

“Nope,” Pidge’s head appeared under his armpit. She took a good look at the bug Keith had found: a giant beetle, a little larger than Keith’s hand and twice as long, that was resting a few feet from them. Pidge shook her head: “This one has pink spots on its horns. It’s a male.”

Keith sighed: they needed a female. According to Coran, the bugs on that planet secreted a substance called Poothing (a word that apparently meant something like ‘Long life’ in Altean), that was pretty much at the base of the healing pod technology. Lance had been horrified when he found that out. Even now he wasn’t doing so well, alternating between high-pitched complaining (“ _This isn’t what I meant when I said I missed my clay masks!"_ ) and shooting too soon and too fast at whatever appeared in his path. Shiro had been tempted to take away his bayard at some point, but he changed his mind when Hunk reminded everyone of the Flintula, a seven foot spider-like creature that dwelled in the darkest caves of The Mud Planet. Keith really, really hoped they didn’t have to fight that thing ( _“It’s my mom that kills spiders at home, Shiro. My mum! Her little Lancey-Lance just watches from a very safe distance while she does the dirty job!"_ ).

Pidge tapped a couple of times on her tablet. “It says here that the males of this species usually stand guarding the nest, so a female shouldn’t be too far.”

“We only need this last one, right?” They had already found seven, now buzzing quietly in a cage Shiro was carrying on his back.

Pidge nodded. “Yes, the Poothing is pretty strong stuff. Coran told me that, back when Altea still existed, they replenished their healing pods only once every few decades. Pretty amazing if you think ab―”

“So after this bug hunt we’ll never have to return here again, right?!” That was Hunk, who still hadn’t recovered from his last encounter with a giant butterfly that had mistaken him for a friendly sunflower.

Pidge sighed and smirked at the same time. “Right.”

“Oh, good. Good,” Hunk fidgeted. “You heard that, buddy? We’re almost done!” He shot a look at Lance, who was standing in a clearing a few feet behind them. Keith frowned.  Something was wrong: Lance was pointing his shotgun somewhere above their heads, eyes focused and tight-lipped.

“Lance…?” Pidge tried to get closer to him, but Keith grabbed her arm, holding her back. “Wait!”

Lance’s voice whispered through the comms: “Nobody move.”

Keith knew an order when he heard one; and _this_ order didn’t sound like one that could be ignored. He followed Lance’s gaze up where the Forest became a dark, twisted net of wet wood and dead leaves: there, looking at them from high above, was the most disgusting creature Keith had ever seen.

“It’s… not a Flintula,” he managed.

“Pidge?” Shiro’s voice was barely more than a whisper. He was worried, and with a good reason: the thing - whatever it was - was slowly creeping towards him.

Pidge swallowed. “No, not a Flintula. This one is… bigger and… not afraid of light,” she was shaking slightly under Keith’s touch. She was thinking - _recalling_. “A Mad Spider,” she finally said. “It’s a Mad Spider!”

Shiro took the tiniest step backward, his right arm glowing a faint purple light. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”

“They were on the verge of extinction, ten thousand years ago. They must have multiplied when a new colony of bugs arrived on this planet.”

“I’m all for making them extinct again,” Lance said.

“Seconded,” Keith agreed, taking a fighting stance.

Pidge didn’t share their opinion. “We can’t take it out. These things are connected to each other through some sort of telepathic bond. If we kill it, it’ll be like ringing the lunch bell.”

Hunk let out a strained laugh: “Let’s not make the Mad Spider mad. I’m not ready to become food.”

As to answer him, the Mad Spider extended one of his long, furry legs towards Shiro - and the bugs, who started making some kind of panicked sound. Something like the annoying buzz of a broken television.

“Any ideas how not to become a Mad Spider dinner, Pidge?” Shiro asked above the noise.

Pidge probably had several. “Well, if it wants our bugs we could―”

Lance broke eye contact with the spider-creature for the first time. “No way I’m letting our bugs get eaten by that thing! Not after what I’ve gone through!” he screamed.

The Mad Spider suddenly descended a couple of feet. Lance took point and fired a warning shot that gained them a few more ticks.

“We are _not_ leaving the bugs,” Shiro said in a harsh voice. “We need them.”

_Or at least just one_ , Keith thought. Matt was... Matt really needed to stay in his healing pod at least for another week but, with only a little Poothing left, the whole system was failing. No way they could abandon their mission now: Lotor was on their trail, and they had no idea when they could come back here, or come across another Mud Planet, if they left now.

Pidge was well aware of that. “We need to lead the Mad Spider to the bugs’ nest.”

“What?” Keith almost yelped. That was a cold suggestion coming from her. Logic but unexpected, considering how heartbroken Pidge was when Coran told them that making the Poothingie implied killing several bugs. But then again, sometimes there were no good choices. “Which way?” he asked.

Pidge tapped again on her tablet. A little green tracker, the size of an Earth’s ladybug, disconnected from her armor and flew over the male bug Keith had found. The device attached itself on its back with a faint _beep_ sound, and Pidge scared the bug away using her bayard. “And now we follow our bug friend,” she said, watching it fly deeper into the Forest.

It was a nice plan, except the Mad Spider had noticed their movements on the ground and decided that crunching some Paladin bones seemed like a great idea. This time Lance’s shot wasn’t a warning. The deadly laser reached the creature in the middle of its disgusting head - and did absolutely no damage. Its skin was too thick.

“ _Crap_.”

The Mad Spider kept charging forward and took care of his attacker with a swift movement of its hind legs. Lance was thrown aside like a rag doll, landing on his side with a painful yelp. “Quiznak,” he swore, a bit winded. Then, as he noticed Keith and Hunk rushing to him: “Just go! Follow the bug! This thing doesn’t care about me!”

Keith got back with an angry snarl, but Hunk was already by Lance’s side, furiously firing at the Mad Spider with his energy cannon and screaming at the top of his lungs. Apparently, he was no longer worried about making the Mad Spider mad.

“Pidge, Keith, let’s go!” Shiro dodged a couple of hairy legs as Keith helped him protect his precious cargo. The female bugs were now buzzing louder than ever. “I think they’re sending a distress call to their kin,” Pidge said, eyes glued to her tablet. She was following the male bug through a net of giant vines, leading them towards a darker part of the Forest.

“Good!” Shiro screamed above the noise. “Hunk, keep shooting! Send the spider our way.”

Some static. Another scream. “Well, I’m not sending it _my_ way!”

Keith smiled and cut some more vines and branches, the Mad Spider now merely a few feet away from them. He felt it move quickly through the dense  vegetation above their heads, using its long, clawed legs to get rid of the obstacles in its path and sending a rain of leaves and chopped wood down on them.

“Ouch!” Pidge’s feet got caught in something and she fell somewhere on Keith’s right. He called out for her: once, twice, but no answer. When he tried to follow her down the ravine, something grabbed him by the waist.

Keith found himself midair, in the iron grip of the Mad Spider. The creature had wrapped some kind of thorny tail around his body: its silver claws punctured Keith’s armor by his chest and upper arms, digging into his skin. The Mad Spider had clearly lost interest in following Shiro and the bugs, and was now looking at Keith with its ten reddish eyes, fangs bared.

Keith was shaken by the realization that maybe Galra were a delicacy to Mad Spiders. _Crap_.

“Keith!” Shiro called from below. “Keith!” More angry, panicked.

Somehow, Keith managed to strengthen his hold on his bayard, blindly bringing the sword down in a powerful strike.

The blade’s cut was deep and unforgiving. With an anguished cry, The Mad Spider lost its tail.

Keith fell to the ground, landing painfully on his right arm. _Not broken, maybe splintered_ , he told himself. He was pretty sure that by the time this mission was over, Matt wouldn’t be the only one badly needing a healing pod.

“Keith,” Shiro called again. The Mad Spider was a wall of dark limbs between them.

“Get to the nest!” Keith screamed. “I can deal with this thing. Just get another bug and find Pidge. I’ll be fine!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

Keith smiled. “I don’t think you have a choice.” And he didn’t either.

The Mad Spider was furious… at Keith. Bugs completely forgotten, it was already planning another attack - one that Keith dodged with more trouble this time, distracted by both the impressive fangs of his attacker and the pain in his arm. He started running again, away from the bugs’ nest and in the opposite direction of Hunk’s panicked screams.

He had to get that thing away from his friends.

It started raining again: heavy drops that fell to the ground in irregular patches, turning everything into a viscid mud. One by one, the voices of his teammates got swallowed by wordless static.

Keith was alone.

This was not new. He would deal with this, like that time he was stranded in the desert for three days and almost died of dehydration. Or when he found out he wasn’t as human as he had always thought. Keith could survive out of sheer stubbornness if needed.

_I’ve got this. I’ve got this. I’ve got―_

The Mad Spider got him. It trapped him against the wall of a dark cave, somewhere deep in the Forest, where he could smell only mouldy water and decay. One hairy leg went through Keith’s right shoulder, pinning him in place as the Mad Spider started poking at his armor, trying to crack it so it could probably eat all that was inside.

Keith didn’t have long before the creature decided to sink its fangs into him.

Just as the horrible stench of the Mad Spider got in his nose, something moved in the shadows above them. Something that Keith had hoped would find them, in the darkest and wettest part of the Forest where he had led the spider.

His captor noticed the new presence too and was quick to move backwards - but not quick enough. The Flintula’s acid got the Mad Spider on the right side, blinding it and melting the flesh of the leg that was trapping Keith. But it wasn’t enough to free him from the cave wall: the arachnid limb had merely snapped in two, and Keith had to use his bayard to finally cut himself free. When he did, he fell five feet and to the ground, where he came face-to-face with some long-dead bugs and a couple of creatures that looked like moths. The latter had transparent blue wings, purple eyes, and long antennae that they used to explore their surroundings, like they were blind. They started crawling along Keith’s arms, quietly creeping toward his shoulders; they would have seemed harmless enough, if not for the worrying fact that Keith was giving them his full attention, willingly ignoring the fight between the Flintula and the Mad Tarantula that was taking place mere feet behind him. He reached out to touch one of the moths’ shiny wings.

“Keith!” Pidge’s cry over the comms snapped him out of his reverie. He moved just in time to avoid being crushed under the Flintula’s weight.

Keith rolled to his left, then to his right, using his bayard to avoid being grabbed again by those deadly legs. He was shivering by the time he finally saw his chance: when the Mad Spider sank its fangs into the Flintula’s chest, Keith spun upward and stepped on the creature’s head, using the momentum to project himself out of the cave. (“ _Mullet, where the quiznak are you?!_ ”)

Midair, Keith cut a vine, quickly grabbed its closest end and swung himself forward. When his feet finally ( _finally_!) touched the ground again, he let himself answer his friends’ frenetic calling. “I’m on my way,” he said, breathless.

By then, the spiders didn’t have any interest left in him.

 

• ◘ •

 

Lance (cracked ribs, sprained wrist) and Keith (cracked ribs, broken arm, holes all over his body) needed a few hours in a healing pod, but everybody else was fine. Smelly, covered in filth and exhausted, but fine.

Everyone was already inside the Green Lion when Keith finally emerged from the Forest, tired and limping, but extremely happy the mission on The Mud Planet was finally over. Shiro had protected their bugs, and Pidge even found the last one: when she had fallen down the ravine, she had landed right in the middle of a giant nest.

“There must have been thousands of those things!” She grinned; but then her cheerfulness faded. “But then they mistook me for a predator―”

“Oh, yeah. You look so scary with those little fangs of yours, Pidge.”

“Shut up before she uses them on you Lance!”

“ _You_ shut up, Mullet!”

Pidge gritted her teeth: “As I was saying.... They mistook me for a _big, scary predator_ and started dousing me with sebum! And now I smell like old cat puke!”

Shiro forced a small smile. “At least this stuff is harmless to humans.” He coughed, as he heard the all-too-familiar sound of Hunk barfing in the background.

“I am never, ever leaving my shower,” Lance said with a subtle sniff at his armpit. “I just hope those bug-things are worth it.”

“They better be,” Keith stepped down into the hangar with a sour expression on his face.

“They are,” Shiro picked up the bugs’ cage, eliciting a new round of buzzing from his prisoners. “I’m taking this to Coran straight away.” He sprinted towards the healing pods’ floor, Pidge close on his tail.

Hunk took off his helmet. “Hey, wait! I wanna see how the Poostuff is made,” he jogged towards the corridor, then turned around. “Lance, are you coming?”

“No way!”

Hunk looked flabbergasted. “But you need to get into a healing pod, stat!”

Lance wasn’t having any of it. “Healing pods are out of order until Allura and Coran make more of that Poothing medicine. And that’s gonna take… at least a couple of vargas,” he counted to five with his fingers. “I am not gonna wait around that long smelling like a… a…”

“A smelly cave-bug?”

“Yes! Thank you, Keith!” Lance smiled before putting up his best affronted expression. “Not like you smell much better, Mullet.”

Keith couldn’t really deny it. He sighed, but still decided to not retaliate: “We’ll be fine, Hunk. The emergency stuff you used on us really helped. I’m not even bleeding anymore.” Just to prove that, he took off the band-aid that covered his upper left arm, revealing the wound the Mad Spider had left there. There was an actual hole in his shoulder: the edges were black and glistening with some shiny substance that was keeping the wound from getting infected. But no fresh blood in sight. Keith smirked: “See?”

Hunk looked like he might be sick again, but nodded anyway. “I’ll see you guys later then.” He said, disappearing down the corridor. Keith watched him go with a small smile on his lips, not even noticing how Lance had fallen into silence until he felt his gaze on him. “What?” he asked, weirded out by Lance’s focused expression.

Lance frowned even more. “Those things really did a number on you,” he lifted his hand, taking it halfway to Keith’s shoulder before quickly drawing it back. He scratched his head. “ _Cheese_ , my hair hadn’t felt this greasy since third grade.”

Keith granted him an eyeroll. “Oh, the tragedy!” he deadpanned, hopping on the elevator for the Paladins’ sleeping quarters.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, you _savage_! Wait until your mullet gets a taste of my secret shampoo! You’ll never feel the same again!”

“You’re letting me use your _secret_ shampoo?” he asked, with a mix of surprise and amusement.

Lance puffed his cheeks out. “Of course! I can’t stand the trainwreck that is your hair any longer and―” he cut off mid-sentence.

“What?”

“What’s that?” Lance was looking at something on Keith’s back. And now that Keith was paying attention to that particular part of his body, he could feel something slowly crawling along his neck. He turned his head slightly and, just then, something bit down. _Hard_.

Keith yelped and reached up to squash whatever was attacking him. “What the―”

“Woah!” Lance looked down at Keith’s open palm, where the moth-like bug from the cave on The Mud Planet lay dying. Its antennae still fluttered slightly, but the pale blue of its wings was fading, leaving space to a pure, opaque white. “It’s pretty!” Lance decided.

“Pretty and annoying,” Keith told him. _Like you_ , he silently mused.

The elevator doors opened. While Lance was enthralled with the dying creature in Keith’s palm, Keith let himself enjoy the childlike smile on his friend’s face. Just a tick or two; he wouldn’t let himself risk more, otherwise…

His neck started burning. “Ugh.”

“Keith?” Lance raised his head, voice worried. “Are you ok?”

Keith reached behind his neck with his free hand. “Yeah. The little bugger just had a nasty bite.”

“Uhm,” Lance had him turn around to get a better look of the injury. “It’s all purple looking. You sure you’re not Galra-ing out?”

Keith chuckled. “I’m not sure that’s even a thing. I’ll be fine, it just stings a little. And in a couple of hours we’ll be in the healing pods anyway.”

Lance shrugged. “Okay.” And then: “Can I have it?”

“What?”

“The nasty little bugger,” he pointed his finger at the now-dead moth. “It’s pretty and Hunk is starting this collection of interesting stuff from outer space and―”

“Oh, okay,” Keith cut off Lance’s rant. “It’s all yours.”

Lance smiled again and took the moth from him with careful hands. “Thank you, Mullet.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“But you like it!”

Keith really, really didn’t.

 

• ◘ •

 

It took another four hours for Keith and Lance to make it into a healing pod. Apparently, Coran had forgotten how hard harvesting the Poothing actually was. By the time he and Allura had finished getting the stuff ready, the Alteans needed to spend a little time on their own in cryo sleep. And a long, long shower.

They both managed to wake up before Keith, who broke his own personal record: eight straight hours in a healing pod. His injuries had been worse than they had thought - and when he got out, he could feel something hadn’t gone right.

Usually, when Keith woke up after a healing sleep, he felt ready to take on a full Galra fleet on his own. This time his head felt light and heavy at the same time, like his body was wrapped in some kind of cotton cloud. He felt like he was walking through a daze, awake but not quite ready for the waking world. And his neck… his neck was _burning_.

Shiro and Pidge, who had basically set up camp beside Matt’s pod, watched him stumble out of his sleep with a worried frown on their faces. Allura, on the other hand, only needed a tick to understand there was something wrong with him. “Sit down!” she ordered none-too gently.

Keith sat.

From his position on the floor, he finally noticed the alarm ringing out, painting the room red with its wretched sound. But they weren’t under attack. Were they…?

“What’s going on?” Hunk got to the healing room with a worried expression on his face, Lance just a few steps behind him. The Blue (Red?) Paladin looked fully healed, even if a bit tired. Maybe the new Poothing was not working like it should have; nobody had made it in the last ten thousand years, after all.

Pidge must have reached that same conclusion, because she was now looking at Matt’s sleeping face with a worried frown.

“This is weird,” Coran’s voice was hurried and a bit too high. It sent a sharp pain straight through Keith’s head.

“Keith has always been weird,” said Lance.

Allura ignored him and kept on tapping on the pods’ control panel. The alarm suddenly stopped: walls white, halls quiet. Keith took a deep breath.

“There is nothing wrong with the pods,” Allura said. “And Keith’s vitals are all fine.”

“Maybe Keith got something your pods can’t detect?” Hunk suggested. “Or a Galra thing. Are your healing pods okay with Galra biology? Maybe it’s a Galra plague. What if it’s a Galra plague and we can’t cure―”

“Hunk, calm down”, Lance stopped his friend’s panicking monologue by putting a hand on his mouth. “There is no Galra plague here. Right, Allura? ...Allura?"

Allura kept tapping on her screen.

“I’m not dying,” said Keith, stubbornly. He reached for the back of his neck, scratching the skin there.

The tapping stopped. “What are you doing?”

He blushed a little, caught off-guard by the urgency in Allura’s voice. “It just… burns.”

That was not entirely true: his neck stung like a motherf― “QUIZNAK!” Allura had just brushed her finger against his skin, making him jump in pain.

Now all eyes were on him, even Pidge’s. “What’s happening to him?” she asked.

Allura squinted. “I’m not sure. He should be fine, but… his neck is all red and puffy.”

_Oh_. “Oh.”

Lance made a ‘mmmh’ sound. “It must be the moth’s fault!” he shouted, running to Keith’s side and taking a long look at his neck. “It’s way worse than before, dude!”

“What moth?” Shiro asked. He came closer and gave them all what Keith called his ‘disappointed-but-worried-stare’. “You noticed your neck was hurt before entering the pod.”

Keith shrugged, trying to hide his shame. “Yes, but it didn’t look like much.”

“Dude, I told you that thing looked bad. Small things can be nasty!” Lance not-so-subtly glanced at Pidge, who bristled silently by his side. “Wait a tick! I’m gonna get the little bugger!”

Shiro hid his face in his palm. “Where is he going now?”

“I squashed the moth that bit me,” Keith explained. “Lance wanted to keep it as a present for Hunk.”

Hunk smiled. “Oh, that was nice of him.”

“And useful,” Allura added.

Lance came back running with an old notebook. He had taped the moth to the pages using some weirdly-colored strips and a couple of pins. By now, the moth’s wings were completely white and nothing was left of the pretty, transparent blue that Keith had admired back on The Mud Planet. As soon as Coran saw the insect on display he let out a gasp. “That?!” he screamed. “That’s what bit Keith?!” He looked pretty shaken, even for Coran’s standards.

Taken by surprise, Lance took a step backward. “Uhm, yes?” he half-stated, half-asked.

“You know of this creature, Coran?” Allura.

“It it dangerous?” Hunk and Pidge.

“Is Keith going to be fine?" Shiro.

Coran scratched his head. “Yes. Yes. And... hard to tell,” he pulled at his mustache. Everyone just stared at him. And then Lance squared his shoulders: “Coran, my favorite Space Uncle, you have to give us more than that.”

Coran smoothed down his mustache. Then coughed. Then licked his lips. Then coughed again: “ _That,_ ” he said, finger pointing to the dead moth in Lance’s book, “is a Barbatullian Leviosa.”

The silence that followed was the one reserved only to world-changing events… and utter befuddlement. Yet, Coran added nothing to his apparently astonishing statement.

“That. Explains. Nothing,” Keith barked.

“Oh,” Coran blinked. “Right,” he coughed again. “The Barbatullian Leviosa is a rare kind of butterfly who dwells in dark and humid environments, not unlike the cave Shiro told me you found yourself trapped in, Number Four.”

“And…?” Allura urged impatiently.

“Well…” Coran seemed a bit uncomfortable now - and that never boded well. Case in point: “The Barbatullian Leviosa is not exactly poisonous. (“Oh, thank quiznak!” interjected Lance.) But…”

“But _what_ , Coran?!” Slav wasn’t even there and Shiro was already on the brink of losing it. Their leader really needed more sleep.

Coran caved in. “The Barbatullian Leviosa defends itself from potential predators by enthralling them and then injecting them with a particular poison (“You literally just said the thing _wasn’t_ poisonous!” Lance quacked.) that makes its victim fall in love with the first person they see.”

Silence. Dead and terrible silence. Keith could feel the blood freezing in his veins.

“Keith got bit by a _Love Bug_?!” Pidge screamed.

Coran coughed into his fist. “Oh, yes. You could say that.”

Keith paled. This couldn’t be true. He did not feel any different. Towards any of them. Especially not towards—

“So!” Coran clapped his hands once. “Which one of you lucky Paladins was the first one Keith saw after being bitten?”

Lance’s notebook fell on the floor, just shy of Keith’s left foot. “Uhm, that would be… me?” A beat. Then Lance’s eyes widened: “Oh, that explains why he was half-flirting with me before!”

And while Keith was busy having the first heart attack of his life (He. Had. Not. Been. Flirting! _He_. _Had_. _Not_!!!), Pidge basically lost it. She was laughing so hard, Keith could _feel_ her lungs burning.

“But it’s temporary, right?!” Hunk asked. “It’s gonna fade in a few dobashes at most.”

Coran smashed all of his hopes and dreams. And then buried them deep, deep underground. “Oh, no. The Barbatullian Leviosa changes permanently the brain chemistry of its victim.”

“What?!” Goodbye Pidge’s uncontrollable laughter. Goodbye general mirth. Goodbye color on Keith’s face.

“This thing is _permanent_?” Pidge sounded horrified.

“Not unless you go back to The Mud Planet and look for more - air quotes - ‘Love Bugs’, as you called them. I’m afraid the only cure is harvesting more of their serum.”

“Wait wait wait,” Lance’s voice was all business now. “Are we 100% sure Keith’s even affected?! He’s been in a healing pod for ages!”

Allura sounded a bit sad - a bit _defeated_ \- when she answered. “I’m afraid that this is not something a healing pod can cure. The system could only warn us that something unusual had happened to Keith while he was sleeping.”

“But…” Lance tried again. “But everyone is always kind-of-flirty with me!”

“In your dreams,” muttered Pidge.

“And maybe it was just a fluke. I mean it’s not like Keith’s acting that differently around me! Right, Keith?”

There it was: his way out. Keith was about to answer that ‘ _No, Lance, I don’t feel more in love with you than the usual right now_ …’ when Coran decided to twist the metaphorical knife: “Lance, the _only_ way not to be affected by the Barbatullian Leviosa is to already be in love with the person you see after getting bitten.”

At this point, Keith was sure Pidge’s lungs had basically exploded. His own brain was ready to do so. Because… if he said he was unaffected, he would basically admit to everyone in the room that maybe (just maybe!) his feelings towards Lance had not-so-recently begun steering away from friendship, rivalry or even what some would call a bromance. And Keith wasn’t ready to admit that. Not even to himself.

“Keith,” Lance’s voice was choked when he called him this time. “Do you feel― Do you have feelings for me, Mullet?”

“I…” didn’t know what to say. His nails dug deeper into his skin, until his palms were hurting and the pain in his neck seemed to fade into something cold and distant. “I…” didn’t know where to start. He wasn’t good with words in the first place and now his head felt all wrong. The numbness was spreading.

Keith could feel everyone’s stares on him. All looking at him.

Because.

He was. In love with Lance.

Because of a bug. With no cure.

Unless…

Unless.

Lance kneeled in front of Keith, took his hands in his own and stopped the burning in Keith’s palms with his trembling touch. “Mullet?”

Keith finally looked up and into Lance’s eyes. He no longer needed to find the right words, nor the wrong ones. They just came to his lips, like they had a will of their own. They told the truth. “You have the most beautiful blue eyes.”

Lance paled. Hunk cooed. Pidge fell onto the floor laughing. Everyone else groaned. And Keith, the giant idiot that he was, just smiled shyly at Lance from behind his bangs. When he came up from his apnea, things had already evolved beyond his control.

 

• ◘ •

 

Coran re-did his math. And he had been right the first time: there was no way they could have gone back to The Mud Planet anytime soon.

“Add a five, carry the two…”, the Altean muttered under his breath. “Ah yes! We’ll be able to get back in about―”

“A whole _movement_?” Lance screeched like a demented banshee.

_A movement._ Seven days, give or taken a few ticks. That’s was how long they had to stay away from The Mud Planet, if they didn’t want to risk an open fight with Lotor’s forces.

“But the planet is just a wormhole away!” Lance complained.

“We can not risk it right now,” Allura explained. “The Galra were already too close to the planet when we sent you there the first time.”

“But…”

Coran stared sternly at Lance. It was an appalling look on Coran - one that luckily didn’t last long. “Do you really want to go back there so soon?”

Lance faltered. “No. Not particularly, but…” he looked at Keith, currently taking The Idiot Thing overboard and blushing under his gaze. “That’s… not right,” Lance said in the end.

Keith tried to ignore the pang in his chest (and the worried glance he got from Shiro) but he did nothing to hide his displeasure from the others. He had to _act_ like Lance was his sun and stars, after all. So he _pouted_. He pouted hard.

“Oh, you know what I mean!” Lance told him. “Regular Keith would agree with me: we need to fix this!”

‘Regular Keith’ just did the lovesick teenager thing: he turned his lips downward, took his knees to his chest and hugged them. _King of pouts._

Allura somehow took this display of angst as an invite to ruffle Keith’s hair. He shivered slightly, and Lance sighed again.

“But do we _have to_ go back to The Mud Planet?” Pidge, the Queen of chaos she was, piped up.

Lance flipped. “What do you mean ‘Do we have to go back’?! Keith is in love. _With me_! ...Because of a _bug_!” he added as an afterthought.

Pidge raised her palms. “And I agree that nobody deserves such a _heinous_ fate. But think about it: if we got back there too soon, we could risk a direct conflict with a whole Galra fleet _and_ exposing the key to an important piece of Altean technology all at once. However, there are no real downsides to Keith’s condition short-term.”

“You think a lovesick Keith is not a downside?!”

Pidge shrugged. “Lovesick Keith looks a lot like Regular Keith to me.”

“Yeah, that’s true!” Hunk piped in. “And he’s even funnier than Galra Keith!”

“He just pouts more,” said Pidge.

“Exactly!”

“ _Hey,_ ” this time Keith stood up to defend his undefendable honor.

Hunk laughed. “Sorry dude, but seriously: crush on Lance aside, do you feel any different? I mean, Shiro… you know him best out of all of us. Does he seem different to you, man?”

Shiro took several moments to ponder his answer; then he shook his head. “No, in the future he might just… act a little more protective of Lance than he does now. But he seems like himself to me.” Keith didn’t need to fake his blush; he had never realized he could be protective of Lance in the first place.

Pidge hummed her approval. “Someone watching Lance’s bacon is not a downside in my book.”

“Hey!”

“That was a compliment, you doofus.”

“Oh. Thanks, Pidge!”

“Anytime. Now. Keith?” Pidge looked at him again, and Keith shrugged.

“No, I… I feel just the same.” _Exactly the same_ , actually. But no one needed to know that. “Except for my neck,” which still itched and stung and made him wanna get into Red (or Black) and set the entire Mud Planet on fire.

Coran crashed back into the conversation. “And that’s where the problem lies, Number Four.”

Even Allura’s interest was piqued then. Her ears actually _twitched_. “Is it something we should worry about?”

Coran took hold of Pidge’s tablet. “I think Keith might be suffering from an allergic reaction to the Love Bug’s bite. It is an extremely rare occurrence, but it can cause severe discomfort to those who are afflicted by it.”

“Severe discomfort?” Allura repeated, suspicious.

Keith bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t always appreciate the Alteans’ diplomatic tact. “You mean death?”

Coran flinched. “In extreme cases, yes. That is a possibility.”

“YOU SAID THE MOTH WASN’T POISONOUS!!!” Lance was looking at Coran like he had just killed his favorite nephew. _Miguel_ , if Keith remembered it right, the one with the bunny teeth.

Coran raised his little finger. “And it isn’t poisonous! Not strictly speaking. Which is why I said it wasn’t _exactly_ poisonous!” He gave the tablet back to Pidge.

“Ugh!” Lance threw his hands in the air and sat angrily on the step beside Keith. Keith slipped further into Idiot Mode and scooted a little to the left, so that their thighs were almost touching. Almost.

“Fine.” Shiro seemed sufficiently weirded out at that point. “We’ll get back to Planet Hell in seven quintants. Sooner if Keith’s neck gets worse.” Everyone nodded their agreement. “In the meantime… Lance, please refrain from flirting with everyone in sight. I don’t like it when Keith pouts.”

Keith popped his head up so fast he was afraid it would fall off. Shiro just smirked at him. ‘I don’t like it when he pouts’ his ass. The _traitor_.


	2. -Idiot Mode: Engaged-

**.Day One.**

 

Entering Idiot Mode was not the brightest idea Keith had ever had. It was probably in his top five worst, though, right between ‘Punching a Garrison instructor where it really hurts’ and ‘Taking on an Evil Emperor on his own’. Both of those had been quicker, happier and 300% less awkward experiences.

Also, this time Keith had no idea what he was doing. He usually followed his instincts and hoped for the best, diving headfirst into battles, jumping in the fray and throwing the first punch. No hard-thinking involved: just a lot of anger, a bit of fear and a total lack of impulse control. He got the job done. Easy.

But with this ‘Being In Love With Lance and Showing It _’_ stuff…. Well, let’s just say that for once he wouldn’t have minded somebody (Shiro, his dad, Steve Irwin) showing up with a manual and telling him how this whole thing was gonna go down.

Following his instincts was out of the question. That had already gotten Keith in enough trouble (“Oh, what big eyes you have, wolfey Lance!”). Besides, it’s not like he could actually _act_ on the things he wanted to do with (for) ( _to_ ) Lance, mainly because he had no idea what he actually wanted to do with (...for?) ( _and maybe to._ ) Lance. Or what he was supposed to want.

“Are you trying to hold my hand?” Lance asked between bites of food goo.

Keith hurried to deny it. “No,” he said, as calmly as he could muster. His pinky gave a little twitch to the right, where Lance’s hand was currently resting on the table, just out of his reach. It was a weird sight, upsetting for a reason Keith couldn’t really explain. _And what else was new?_

“You’re totally trying to hold my hand!”

Keith looked at Lance: elbows on the table, back straight, eyes alert - nose scrunched up. He thought about it: _Holding hands with Lance._ Would that have been wrong? Keith had never wanted to before; maybe he should have wanted it? That was what couples did, right? Hold hands, swap kisses, trade stupid nicknames...

“Leave him alone, Lance,” Hunk brought more food goo to the table. “He’s just figuring out how to deal with his unexpected crush on you.”

“Yeah. Have some respect man. The guy’s _traumatized_.”

“ _Pidge_!”

“I’m not teasing Shiro, I really mean it this time!”

Back when he still bothered showing up for his classes at the Garrison, Keith had kissed a few people, sort-of had sex with a couple more, and flirted with some late night visitors. He never felt compelled to call any of those people ‘baby’, ‘darling’ or any other ridiculous pet names. The mere thought of calling Lance any of that made Keith deeply uncomfortable: Lance was not a baby (though sometimes he acted like one), nor a darling (though he could be), and Keith had never wanted to call him anything but his name - not even that stupid _Lancey Lance_ that sometimes Pidge used.

“ _He’s_ traumatized?! Think about me!” Lance’s voice was coming from far away. Keith moved his fingers, feeling the texture of his gloves straining under the gentle pressure of muscles and joints.

The soft anger in Allura’s words almost didn’t reach him: “Are you seriously making Keith’s affliction about you now?”

“Well, of course I am! It _is_ about me! This couldn’t be _more_ about me!”

Was this quarrel about the difference everyone else was always talking about? The one between Sex and Love...? Keith’s only first-hand experience with romantic relationships were the trashy novels he had read out of boredom when he was in middle school. And maybe the sugary sweet promises he heard whispered in the dark of movie theatres. ‘When I look at you, the world stops spinning,’ ‘We are destined to be together,’ ‘I’ll love you ‘till the end of time,’ ‘You make my world brighter.’

“You are such a drama queen, Lance!”

“How. Dare. You!”

“A drama queen? What’s that, Number Five? Some kind of dejected royalty?”

“The only kind of royal Lance is, is a royal pain in the a―”

“ _Pidge_!”

Was that how people really felt when they were in love…? Or was it just a charade? Keith didn’t know and he hadn’t bothered _knowing_ until now. He had never needed an answer because he had never wanted to tell Lance those things (‘My love, my darling, my knight in shining armor!’). And maybe that was the point. Maye Keith just wasn’t built to feel that kind of love.  

“Are you eating that?” Hunk’s voice, Hunk’s pink apron, Hunk’s smile.

Keith blinked. Around the table, everyone else was ganging up against Lance, then against Pidge, and then - for some reason - against Coran and...

Keith shook his head at Hunk. “No, thank you.” He pushed the food goo away as Lance came back to his chair, sitting down with a loud thud. “You’re just all jealous I’m the most loved person on this ship! After Allura, of course,” he winked at her.

Keith stared at Lance, dazed. There had never been any butterflies in his stomach - just the sting of a bug on his neck, and a weird tingling in his fingertips whenever his skin brushed against Lance’s, like Keith was afraid the other would disappear…. And the feeling that Keith’s hands were used to touching Lance even if they never had before.

Keith woke up. “I think you’re right. They’re really jealous of us,” and he grabbed Lance’s hand.

Everyone stopped talking at once.

“Uhm, Keith?” Lance froze, paled, and blushed. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

Keith didn’t look up from their entwined fingers. “I’m sorry. Just give me a tick, okay? It’s like Hunk said. I’m just… figuring out how to handle this.” He was lying: he was already used to it by now. Or at least he thought so.

Lance was clearly uncomfortable, but he nodded anyway. He sat, silent and still, as Keith’s fingers and palm learnt the shape of his hands under their touch. _Lance is here._ Keith held on until that tingling under his skin subsided. _Lance is here. Lance is here. Lance is here._ Eyes closed, breath strained, _Lance is here._

Keith let go.

“Thank you.”

Lance nodded stiffly.

Keith pushed his own chair farther on the left and looked up at Hunk with his fakest smile: “Is there any Nigellian Butter Cake left?”

  


**.Day Two.**

 

There had been no Nigellian Butter Cake left.

There was, however, a Hunk Garrett loose on the Castle of Lions. A Hunk that had apparently spent the last day and a half worrying himself sick over Keith’s (and Lance’s) love life. Because, being in love with Lance? “Dude, that must be exhausting!”

“Not really,” Keith kept chewing. Hunk kept cooking.

There were now three Nigellian Butter Cakes, seven Salty Rivoly Loaves and an astonishing forty five Covfefe Cupcakes spread around the kitchen. Well, forty four: the mice had already claimed their first victim.

“You know I can’t eat all of that on my own, right?” Keith had been hungrier than usual since they had come back from the Mud Hell Planet, but there was no way he could keep up with Hunk’s nervous baking. He doubted the entire Garrison could have.

Hunk stopped blending. “Oh, yeah yeah. I’m just making a couple more cakes so I can get them to Pidge and Shiro.” The two of them had gone back camping outside Matt’s pod, relieved (Shiro) and disappointed (Pidge) that Keith’s close encounter with the Love Bug hadn’t turned him into some sort of sex-maniac. (“ _No worries, Number Four! We aren’t even close to where the Blooming Flowers of Yoi grow. Oh, those were_ fun to be around!”)

Hunk put his bowl down: “They taste good, right?” he hovered above the cakes with his spoon. “I run out of Nigellian berries so I had to use some additional Rivoly Flowers to balance the flavour.”

“Yeah, they’re good,” considering that Keith was licking his spork clean at every bite that was an understatement.

A _swish_ at the door. Lance walked in: Blue Lion slippers, blue nightgown and bluish bags under his red-shot eyes. Keith bit the inside of his cheek, just a tick short from asking if Lance’s beauty routine finally failed him. “Good morning,” he chirped instead. He unconsciously went back to licking his spork, never pulling his gaze away.

Lance stilled. The mice squeaked. The Nigellian’s Butter Cake mix fell from Hunk’s spoon and onto the floor, doomed to never be eaten. Keith’s tongue stopped licking.

Five ticks later, Lance basically ran back to his room, leaving with a hurried “I’m not that hungry, see you later Hunk!”

Keith groaned, face buried deep in his hands. “Ugh.”

“Well, that could have gone way worse.” Hunk said. No reproach. No scolding tone: just the plain facts - and then he went back stirring his cake mix.

At that point, Keith had simply lost his appetite. He slipped his plate aside, where Platt was already nursing his flat, round belly. “Do I really make him that uncomfortable?” Lance had been basically avoiding Keith since the previous evening, skipping dinner and showing up for breakfast several hours late. It had _never_ happened before.

Hunk let out a long, careful sigh. “Honestly? I don’t know man, Lance has always been weird with this kind of stuff.”

Keith cocked his head in confusion. “What kind of stuff?”

“Uhm, flirting? And lovey-dovey relationships in general? Don’t tell him I was the one who told you this but, he’s really, really bad at them. And I mean it: really, _really_ bad.”

“But he flirts all the time!”

“Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean he’s any good at it. Have you heard his pick up lines?”

Yes: Keith had heard all of Lance’s best pick up lines. And they were awful. Endearing, sometimes; childish on occasion; but overall awful. “But he has no shame,” he wailed.

Hunk let out a nervous laugh. “Yes, that’s the problem. He―” A pause.

Hunk gathered his thoughts. “Look, Lance flirts because he’s nervous, okay?” doubts seemed to melt one by one, like clumps in a Nigellian Buttercake mix. “That was our thing at the Garrison: I puked, he flirted. Man, once he even did it with Iverson. I had nightmares for weeks, Keith, _weeks_!”

Keith just blinked. “That makes no sense.”

“I know! How had he even guessed Iverson had a thing for―”

“No! Not Iverson. I meant… the flirting without meaning it. I don’t think I could ever do that.”

“Oh!” Hunk shrugged again. “I guess we all have our ways to cope with, well, whatever we have to cope with. My point is: Lance is rarely serious about his flirting. He doesn’t _expect_ to be taken seriously. And when that happens, he…”

“...panics?”

“Yes! Like you wouldn’t believe! I doubt he could spit out his own name if asked. He gets so flustered!”

The mice squealed in delight, and Keith smiled down fondly at them. It was always about panic with Hunk.

Keith took a moment to enjoy his friend’s glee, then recalled Lance’s weird stuttering the day before, and his more-than-recent bloodshot eyes. “I’m freaking him out, aren’t I?” Keith hadn’t really _done_ anything to show his Deep Fake Love to Lance, but somehow he managed to eff it up anyway.

“A little,” Hunk sighed. “That hand-holding thing you did yesterday really did a number on him.”

“Oh.” Keith bit his lip and felt the faint tang of blood in his mouth. His fingers started tingling again.

“Don’t worry about it. Lance will bounce back from this sooner than you think. He’ll probably be around more once he realizes that when you flirt with him you’re not _really_ flirting, if you know what I mean.”

Keith nodded. Yeah. As far as everyone else knew, there were no real feelings involved in this. Keith’s love for Lance was temporary.

A fluke.

A big, fat lie.

Hunk must have seen something ugly on his face because he quickly backtracked. “Not that your feelings are invalid, because they totally are. Valid! I mean, your feelings are very valid.”

Lance could tease and flirt back if he wanted. Just for fun, without meaning any of it; maybe even with the intent to distract Keith’s from his own ordeal. It was something they all would laugh about later, when the bite’s effects had faded, and all was left for Keith was the memory of being desperately in love with Lance.

“I just meant, what the Love Bite is making you _feel_ _―_ _”_

“Hunk,” Keith stopped him before he worked himself up to an anxiety attack. “It’s alright,” soft hand on Hunk’s forearm, fake smile on his own lips.

Hunk finally got out of his apron. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt by this,” he said.

“I know, Big Man.”

Hunk’s eyes started shining at the mention of the first sort-of-nickname Keith had used for him, back when they all ran away from the Garrison. “Good.”

As Hunk left, Keith let the mice nibble at his fingertips. He _knew_ this charade would bring him more pain later, but he still couldn’t stand the idea of Lance avoiding him.

 _Just a memory_ , he told himself. He only needed that. One small bit of happiness to bring with him always, before his seven days were over.

  


**.Day Three.**

 

Multiple matches with the gladiator, an awkward dinner, two incomprehensible thumbs up from Allura and three slices of cake after his conversation with Hunk later, Keith found himself staring at the grey ceiling above his bed.

Sometimes the nightmares left him alone long enough to dream, but he still feared what sleep would bring along. The worst came after harsh battles with the Galra or petty fights with the other Paladins: he saw the faces he loved twisted in pain and anger, telling him he was a monster, a freak, a mistake. Keith’s deepest fears came alive and thrived in the darkness.

It was with a dark fascination that Keith wondered what would happen if he fell into another nightmare now: would his rouse be discovered? Would Lance taunt him or, worse, pity him and finally let go of their made-up rivalry? Could they lose Voltron if Keith didn’t figure out what he really wanted…?

His thoughts were like the halls of an ancient maze, luring him in and never letting him reach its center. He wasn’t aware of time passing, and yet he felt like he had been lying on his bed for centuries, body frozen and limbs shriveled.

The only thing keeping Keith grounded was the pain at the base of his neck: the bite had started itching again. That’s what gave him the space to think about the dreaded Phase 2 of his plan.

He spent long dobashes that became long vargas mulling over the problem. When he found his not-so-perfect solution, Keith was glad Shiro would be too busy looking after Matt to witness his downfall.

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith’s breakfast downfall went like this: “Lance?", “Yes, Mullet?", “You are like water and I am thirsty.”

Breath strained, lips between teeth, hand holding his chin: Keith batted his eyelashes at Lance and stared at him the same way a man lost in the desert stares at a glass of water.

That was a kind of longing Keith was all-too-familiar with, so it hadn’t been difficult to make his eyes look all pathetic and stuff. The hardest part had been (and still was) the sultry tone, but thinking about the romantic movies Former Foster Mother #2 liked helped Keith a lot. He just had to hide his disgust for the ‘Tongue slithering that defeated the hollowing darkness’ behind a dreamy sigh and say: “Can I get a sip?”

Lance jumped a good head up his chair. “EXCUSE ME!”

Keith had never thought a human being could screech like that. Lance blushed. Stuttered. Almost fell out his chair. He looked around the dining room, stunned into a silence that hushed even Pidge’s loud munching. And then - when there was nothing left to stare at - Lance stared at Keith like he was a dangerous life form he wasn’t allowed to kill.

“What.” First try.

“What did.” Second try.

“What did you say?!” Third time’s the charm.

Keith didn’t move an inch. He simply stared back at Lance, willing himself not to break character. He pulled his lips up in an overly affectionate smile: “Your voice is like a siren’s call,” he slithered closer and closer. “It makes me feel all safe and warm.”

“Wha―”

That’s when Hunk caught up. “Oh!” he started laughing, tears in his eyes. “That’s a good one!”

“Thanks,” Keith drawled the word out.

“Do you have anything with sharks? Lance loves sharks!”

It was a miracle that Keith didn’t roll his eyes at that. Because _of course_ Lance loved sharks. “No,” he said with an exaggerated pout. Then he winked at Lance: “But he can sink his teeth into me anytime he wants.”

“Oh my god!” Hunk lost it. They lost Hunk. Goodbye, brave Hunk! “Oh my god!”

Hunk started having trouble breathing and Keith actually got a bit worried. Luckily, Coran hurried over and gave the Yellow Paladin a loud pat on the back. Hunk spit out a third: “Oh my god!” and a brand new fit of giggles.

The others still seemed completely oblivious to what was going on.

And Allura _hated_ not knowing what was going on. She looked from Hunk to Keith to Lance and back to Hunk again with something akin to utter befuddlement. “Paladins, what’s happening here?”

“Keith is― Keith is―” Hunk was not able to tell what Keith was or what Keith was doing: he was too busy choking on his own spit. Coran patted his back again.

Unluckily for Allura, Pidge also got on with the program. “Unbelievable,” she said, letting a slice of space bread fall from her mouth. “I guess that Love Bug really _did_ mess with your brain chemistry after all.”

Keith gave her the middle finger with his left hand and blew her a kiss with his right. That was enough to send her rolling on the floor as well. Allura took this ‘latest display of madness’ as a personal offense and exchanged a worried look with Coran, who just gave up and sat back on his chair. “This is so unlike all of you!” he said.

Keith took pity on them: “That’s the point.”

And Lance magically understood. Something inside his watery brain _clicked_ : “You’re doing this on purpose!” He pointed a finger at Keith, who simply wiggled his eyebrows at him. “Yes, Lancey Lance, I am,” he wiggled again, to test out this new and useless skill.

Lance blinked. Slowly. “You are unbelievable. You―”

“Yes?” Keith went back to look at him from under his bangs. _Overly bashful and overly shy mode engaged._ “I what, Lovely Lance?”

Lance put a hand on his heart. “Okay, you win.”

_What?_

“What?!” That wasn’t just Keith, but Pidge and Hunk as well.

“You win.” Lance sat back in his chair, arms crossed. “I’m not avoiding your lovestruck Mullet face anymore.”

Keith grinned. “So you admit it: you’ve been avoiding me.”

“I admit _nothing_!” Lance’s voice became a little rougher, more teasing. “But you obviously can’t stand the idea of living without The Lance within your reach, so I’ll do you a favor and stop hiding from you.”

Pidge’s groan could be probably heard from the other side of the universe. Keith just gaped, actually taken aback by how much Lance had figured out (or was pretending he had figured out). That was one of the weirdest things about Lance: sometimes, when he joked, he somehow became sharper without even realizing it.

Keith got his wits back together. “Can I stop doing this Lovey-Dovey thing, then? My blood is turning into liquid sugar.”

Hunk found enough air in his lungs to speak again. “I’m surprised you lasted that long, man! I’m impressed.”

“Well, I’m disgusted!”

“Nobody asked you, Pidgeon!” Lance said. “That was hilarious!”

“Wait, Keith’s attempt at seduction was just joke?” Allura asked. The Alteans were still having trouble figuring out their Paladins’ odd behavior.

“It was!” Lance was all fired up now. “And no, Keith! You can’t stop saying that stuff! It’s what’s finally making you bearable!”

“Are you sure, Lance?” Pidge’s smile was all pointy teeth. “Because he’s already way better than you at flirting.”

“How dare you! I fear no rival! I’m the master of flirty-flirting!”

“Flirty-flirting that _never_ works.”

Hunk threw Keith a glance that was all but subtle. Luckily for him, Lance was too busy squabbling with Pidge to notice it. “Master of Flirting, that’s me!” he declared, right foot on the table and hands on his hips.

“Get down this instant!” Allura shouted.

Keith offered Lance his best eye roll. “Cargo pilots,” he muttered under his breath. “Cute as hell, but dumb as quiznak.”

The affronted look Lance gave him was well worth the price of Keith’s forgotten pride.


	3. -Something’s bugging Lance-

**.Day Four.**

 

“How’s he doing?”

Shiro didn’t hear him the first time. He was too focused on the healing pod in front of him to notice anything else. Keith took a couple of steps closer and asked again, just a little louder. He was careful not to reach out and touch Shiro, even by mistake; he knew that if he got too close, he would have to deal with a soldier fighting to protect his teammate. But he was lucky; Shiro answered this time.

“Better,” a small smile. “We’re lucky we were able to find a planet with those bugs. All things considered,” Shiro added, finally meeting Keith’s eyes.

“Yeah.”

“And how are _you_ doing?”

Ah, that was an interesting question, wasn’t it? _How was Keith doing?_   “Fine, I think.”

“Fine.”

“Yeah, I’m… I’ve had to deal with worse.” That last part was true, and Shiro knew it very well. Still, he didn’t seem convinced Keith was telling him everything he needed to know… probably because he was right.

Keith’s suspicion was confirmed when another of Shiro’s favorites sentences made its comeback: “Sometimes the hardest things we have to deal with are the ones we have to face every day.”

And speaking of ‘sometimes’... sometimes Keith suspected Shiro knew everything: about Keith, about Lance... about the bottomless rabbit hole Keith had jumped into because of his stupid feelings. It wouldn’t have been the first time Shiro figured out something about Keith that took Keith himself several years to come to terms with. Like his love for flying (there was a freedom only speed could give), or the real reason he liked hippos so much (they used turtles as little hats, okay? That was adorable!).

“Hunk helped a lot,” Keith said.

Shiro seemed to like that answer. “I’m glad you’re getting close to the others.”

The way Shiro said that word - _close_ \- made Keith feel a little self-aware. After successfully using his Cheesiest Pick Up Lines on Lance, he was taken by surprise by how easy it was keeping up that kind of banter. He had toned it down during the day (he didn’t think he would have survived otherwise), and he was actually having fun with it. Pidge, of course, had jumped on the bandwagon and started teasing both him and Lance. Bonus: Hunk finally got over his panic and put on hold his compulsive baking; now he was back experimenting with food goo’s flavors. The mice were delighted.

Keith nodded. “Yeah, bonding is good for the whole team.”

For some reason, something dark flashed through Shiro’s eyes. He turned his chest away from Matt’s healing pod, arms down his sides, and faced Keith. “Well, yes. But what I meant is that it’s good _for you_. You never seemed very willing to interact with the others more than strictly necessary before, even when we first started piloting the Lions.”

“Oh.” That… that was true. “Yeah. I guess.” Keith scratched his cheek. Up until that point, he had pinned his chats with the other Paladins as a direct consequence to living with the same four people (six, if you counted Allura and Coran) on a ship with limited space available. As big as the Castle of Lions was, most of its rooms were still full of metaphorical dust, lights out and furniture empty. You were bound to pick some stuff along the way, even if that ‘stuff’ were other people.

Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “About this thing with Lance―”

The healing pod’s system let out a sudden beep. The sound was nothing like the alarm that had everyone run into the room just a couple of days before. There wasn’t an unknown problem to solve, just a long-awaited update that halted Shiro before he could start what would have been an extremely awkward conversation.

“What does it say?” Keith asked.

Shiro stared at the long lines of symbols, defeated. “No idea.”

Neither of them spoke Altean, but Pidge did. It took her just a few minutes to rush to her brother’s side and bend her head over the thick digital report on the screen. By the time she reached the last line, her smile was blinding: “Matt should be out of there in just a few quintants.”

“That’s correct, Number Five!”, Coran’s head appeared out of nowhere, startling everyone out of their glee. “It looks like we’ll have a proper family reunion soon.”

Keith absently wondered if Matt waking up would make Lance miss his own family more. He smothered down the thought, grunting when the back of his neck started itching again.

Coran’s eyes found him. “Problems, Keith?"

“Uhm, not really,” he lied. “I was just wondering if you had anything for my rash.”

“The bite is bothering you again, uh?" A little twirl of Altean mustache. “Don’t worry, I’ve got just the right thing for it!”

 

• ◘ •

 

‘The right thing for it’, as Coran called it, was the Poothingie. Lots and lots of Poothingie - which was not the same thing as the Poothing, by the way, but a watered-down version of it that the Alteans used to cure, well… everything: “Cramps, high fever, gushing wounds,” a whisper, “masculine problems… even a running nose!”

Apparently, the Poothingie was also the weird, lumpy substance that represented 90% of the Altean emergency kits stored in the Lions. Think about that: a whole civilization’s medicine relying on bug’s slimy slime. And to make things worse....

“It smells like strawberry bubble gum.”

“What’s that? Some kind of flower?”

Keith wrinkled his nose. “More like toxic waste that gives you a splitting headache.”

“Well, no headaches from the Poothingie!” Coran spread another thick layer of gray-green slime on Keith’s neck. “It is a thing of miracles!” he shoved a little glass jar branded ‘More Poo for your thingie!’ into Keith’s hands.

Keith might hate the smell of the Poothingie, but he had to admit it worked fast. His neck stopped itching and his thoughts became clearer. His head didn’t feel like a helium balloon anymore. “Thanks, Coran.”

“Anytime, young Paladin. And let me know if you need to practice with your... what do you call them? Pick up lines?! I was quite a popular word-maker when I was younger!”

Before Coran started teaching him Altean poetry, Keith hurried to get his jacket back on and made a beeline for the door. In his haste, he ran straight into Lance’s scrawny chest.

They both spread their arms and legs in order not to fall. “Woah, woah. What’s the rush, Mullet? Heard my fan-club is giving out kissed photos of me?”

Pavlovian response: “I don’t care about your kisses if you’re not kissing me.”

Lance gaped at him.

 _Quiznak_. Keith was getting dangerously good at making this stuff up on the fly. Not like he enjoyed it. That would have been way out of character for him. ...Right? _Right_. Back to reality, please.

“Lance? What are you doing?” Keith looked down, where Lance’s nose was getting closer and closer to his collarbone.

Smelling him. Lance was smelling him.

“Uhm? Are those strawberries? I love strawberries! Where did you find strawberries?!” with each guess Lance’s voice reached new, higher pitches. “Did Hunk finally manage to duplicate the taste? Without telling me?! Unbelievable!” He started marching towards the kitchen, in search of retribution (and fresh fake strawberries).

“No Hunk involved,” Keith stopped Lance’s mission of vengeance before it could start. “It’s just an unguent Coran gave me. It makes me smell like bubble gum.”

Lance deflated. “Oh.” Then, like a child asking for candies: “Can I have some?!”

Keith almost said yes. Then decided to have fun with it. “It’s bug slime,” he informed Lance.

Display of utter desperation from said Lance. “I hate bug slime!”

Eyebrow raise. “You do realize there’s way worse ingredients in the stuff you willingly put on your face every night, right?”

Accusing finger. “Leave my beauty routine out of this!”

Keith sighed. “Not like you need any help in the beauty department,” he whispered, just loud enough for Lance to hear. Keith realized a bit too late that this wasn’t just a cheesy pick-up line. It was something he actually and honestly thought. It felt like an ice bucket had dropped on his head. Because: _really, Keith? Really?!_

But Lance, Master of Bad Flirting, was already two steps ahead: he replaced his cheerfulness with a half-warm smile and a bashful look. “Uhm, thanks,” he said. And then his smile fell; because Keith had broken their unspoken agreement: _Only say overly cheesy stuff. Never the truth. We can’t deal with the truth right now_.

Keith closed his eyes in guilt. “Lance, what I meant―”

But Lance didn’t let him explain. “I need to tell Hunk something!” He jogged down the corridor, towards the Yellow Lion’s hangar and away from Keith’s traitor mouth. When he reached the closest corner, he stopped to look back at Keith. “I hope your rash gets better,” he said. And then he was gone.

Keith leaned against the wall and sighed.

Playing Lovesick Fool was getting harder.

 

**.Day Five.**

 

As it turned out, intergalactic wars didn’t stop just because some Paladins couldn’t handle their feelings.

They kept fighting the Galra, and they kept forming Voltron. Luckily, Keith’s current predicament wasn’t putting a strain on the bond with their Lions. He just felt more aware of the others’ presence in his mind. Lance’s kept nudging at the border of his consciousness: small, faint touches that Keith knew weren’t intentional. He learnt to ignore them, focusing on the battle ahead and maybe throwing a small compliment or two at Lance when they were flying back to the Castle. Little stuff, there to remind everyone that there was an explanation behind the secretive smiles that graced Keith’s features these days. (“That was great!”, “Good job, sharpshooter”, “Nice save, Lance.”)

And yet, there was a difference between those words and the awful one-liners Keith made up to not-so-fake-flirt with Lance. He really meant them. He had always wanted to say them out loud; not only to Lance, but to everyone else as well, like Shiro always did. (“Good job, team!”, “You’ve all improved greatly!”) But something had always stopped him before: embarrassment, someone else’s voice covering his own, the thought of Lance turning it all into some sort of competition. Fear. Fear of someone reaching the wrong conclusion: _“You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?!”_

But now… now Keith could praise and cheer and smile little smiles to the other Paladins without worrying what would happen next. Maybe this was even something he could keep doing after they went back to The Mud Planet to find a cure for his rash. It would be good for the team, right? Shiro already seemed to think so, and Keith gladly put ‘victory cheers’ in the growing list of things he liked to do after successfully completing a mission.

 

• ◘ •

 

They received five different distress calls that week. Three were from stranded vessels; one was from a Blade operative that had crashed onto a hostile planet; and the last one was from a civilization on Bakugi, a planet that Voltron had recently freed from Zarkon’s reign.

They dealt quickly with the first two, Hunk and Pidge pushing buttons and fixing old mechanical parts at a speed that was - for lack of a better word - utterly frightening. The last request for help, however, involved stolen supplies and five kidnapped alien leaders. It took team Volton a little longer to figure out their move.

The plan was good. Simple, like Keith liked them: infiltrate the enemy ship using the Green Lion, locate the prisoners, save the prisoners. (“That’s not a plan, that’s what we need to do!”, Keith shrugged at Lance in a very affectionate way: “Whatever, that’s still what we’re gonna do.”)

Somehow, they ended up trapped in a cargo-bay, surrounded by centurions, with Pidge trying to highwire a random electrical panel to toast the ship’s weapons. While she worked under the protection of a huge metal plate, Keith was busy cutting limbs in the middle of the hangar, back-to-back with a very loud Lance.

“Pew pew pew!” A thud.

“Ba-choo! Ba-choo! Ba-choo!” A laser-gun exploding.

“Blam blam blam!” A mechanical arm flying over Keith’s head.

“Vr―”

“STOP IT!!!” Pidge’s scream blasted through the comms, exclamation points and all, and almost made Keith lose his balance. “We’re in the middle of a battle here!”

Unfazed, Lance shot the last centurion and lowered his blaster. “Oh, come on, Pidgey Pidge. It’s not like I wasn’t paying attention. Besides, those losers were the last ones.”

Yeah… not quite. A Galra soldier had been hiding behind the remains of a crashed fighter ship and chose that moment to attack them with a spear. Keith stroke him down with a swift blow of his sword.

Lance watched the mechanical body fall on the floor with sweat markings on his forehead. He looked back at Keith.

“Swish swish,” Keith said.

Pidge groaned. ‘Annoying idiots’ aside, she managed to hack into the spaceship’s systems, disable its weapons and unlock the prisoners’ cells. Keith and Lance were now escorting the five rescued Bakugians through the cargo bay and to their rescue shuttle while Pidge kept tinkering at the far end of the room.

“Could you keep your weapons ready?” a scared voice asked.

The Bakugians were afraid the Galra would come out of nowhere and attack them again. Keith couldn’t really blame them: the Paladins had found the interrogation room when they had first boarded the ship. Let’s just say it wasn’t a happy place. “Of course. Lance, weapons ready.”

“Like always.” Lance was having a good time showing off his sharpshooter’s abilities, taking aim against invisible enemies. _Pew, pew, pew!_ , Lance’s voice echoed in Keith’s head.

The Bakugians seemed to calm down after a while, following the two of them through the ship’s dark hallways. At some point Pidge must have crowned herself Queen of the Stolen Ship because the light changed from an ugly purple to a soft, blue-green glow. “This is a 100% evil Galra-free environment,” a robotic voice said through the ship’s speakers. Their alien charges cheered, and Keith felt the muscles of his back relax a little at the announcement. That, until he noticed something weird with one of the Bakugians.

She (or at least Keith thought the alien was a she) reminded him of Nyma: big, purple eyes with no pupils, careful movements, and a lithe, agile body that was currently pressed against Lance’s left side. She must have been really grateful for his help.

Keith wasn’t bothered by her. He was used to Lance taking selfies, trading hugs and chaste kisses with the pretty aliens the Voltron Coalition helped. Some of them were friendlier and flirtier than others, and Lance _riveted_ in their heartfelt displays of gratitude: he liked it when they called him Great Blue Paladin, and his eyes lit up when they said his name - just his real name. Lance. ‘ _Thank you, Lance,’_ like he was more than just a faceless soldier… more than one of the pieces of a weapon that would live-on as a legend, making history forget the names of its pilots.

Keith scratched his neck. Judging from the way she was rolling it on her tongue, Not-Nyma seemed to really like Lance’s name. Her voice was rough, her tone a bit too-intimate, and a couple of her fellow Bakugians were acting like she was being a bit-too forward. That was when Keith notices something weird: Lance wasn’t flirting back. Well, not like he would usually do anyway. Instead of throwing his terrible one-liners at her, he was actively trying to put some distance between them.

“Neti, if you don’t mind. I need my arm back just in case I need to shoot some evil kidnappers.”

Not-Nyma pouted. “But Lance, I’d feel so much safer if I stayed close to you!”

“And I get that,” sparkly grin, wink, the whole Lance Thing. “But you know how we Paladins need to feel our powerful weapons in our hands!”

Neti giggled loudly, but finally agreed to detach herself from Lance’s body. Keith would have missed it if he hadn’t been paying attention, but Lance actually sighed in relief. Then he turned to give a quick glance in Keith’s direction. Their eyes met, and Lance did a double take, hiding his blush behind a fake cough.

And just like that Keith _knew_.

When the rescue ship left with the Bakugian leaders, he finally addressed the problem. “You don’t have to do it,” he told Lance.

Lance’s arm stiffened in mid-wave. “What?" he didn’t look away from the small ship as it flew towards the Castle of Lions.

Keith licked his lips. “You can still flirt with other people. I don’t care, really. It doesn’t bother me.”

“But Shiro―”

“Shiro was joking when he asked you not to.”

Lance finally let his hand fall to his side. “I don’t think so.”

Keith was getting annoyed now. “It wasn’t his call anyway.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not like I’m doing this for you anyway.”

 _That_ got Keith’s attention. “Oh?”

“Well, duh!” _Lancesplaining mode engaged_. “Have you seen her?”

“Who, Not-Nyma?”

Lance spluttered. “Her name’s Neti! Keith, my man: at least do your rivals a favor and remember their names!”

“She’s not my―”

Lance couldn’t be stopped. “Neti was pretty, but a little too handsy -  you probably noticed that. And the way she looked at me? Like she could just eat me up...? And she had the teeth for it! Totally not my thing, dude. I’m a Paladin, not a pancake!”

Keith let out an incredulous laugh. “Yeah, you’re far from edible.”

“Exactly!” Lance boasted. And then: “Wait, was that an insult?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You are the worst.”

“At least the _second_ worst.”

Lance plunged into a dangerous train of thoughts. “Does that mean _I win_?”

Pidge’s head growled in the space between them, making them sprung apart with a loud yelp. “What the cheese!” Lance shouted, startled.

Somehow Pidge had crawled out from under her control panel and to the end of the hangar without them noticing. Luckily, she didn’t have the same killing intent of a Galra sentry. Or at least Keith hoped so. She ignored their bickering: “Lance, I need someone to activate a panel from the other side of the hangar. Be the best worst Paladin ever and do that for me?”

“Fine!” The best worst Paladin ever propped his blaster on the back of his neck and sauntered off.

“The other way, Lance!” Pidge pointed towards the corner of the hangar farthest from them.

“Still fine!”

Keith watched Lance go with an amused smile. When his bubbly persona disappeared behind a container, he felt a tingle down his spine that alerted him something was off. It was a very different feeling from the light buzz he got whenever he touched Lance - or thought about touching Lance. This one, maybe a present from his Galra-side, was like some sort of sixth-sense that warned him of an imminent danger. In this case, Pidge’s inquisitive gaze.

“What?” he asked, uneasy.

Pidge smirked. Not a good sign. “You should be careful with that.”

Keith lowered his bayard and attached it to his utility belt.

Pidge seemed to find his reaction very funny. “I meant the way you look at Lance,” she explained. “All soft and soulful.”

Keith blushed. He hadn’t even realized he had been doing that. Again. Maybe a lot worse than before. “It’s just- You know, the Love Bug,” he fumbled.

“If you say so,” Pidge spun on her heel and started getting back to her control panel. Halfway there, she changed her mind and turned around again. “You’ve been doing that for a while, you know? Looking at Lance with stars in your eyes. It’s going to become obvious even to who’s not paying attention.”

Keith felt his heart stop. She surely couldn’t mean-

“The Love Bug,” he insisted. _It was the Love Bug’s fault._

But Pidge was Pidge, and she couldn’t be swayed. “You stopped fighting just to smile at him once, right in the middle of a battle with Lotor’s generals.”

“No!” he protested. “That would have been dangerous. I wouldn’t―”

“But you did,” Pidge told him. “And it wasn’t dangerous: Lance has just taken out the danger and you knew it. Still… that happened long before the Love Bug, Keith.”

“Look, Pidge―”

“I’m just saying…. Maybe what you’re feeling right now is not _that_ different from what you felt before. It’s worth thinking about it, right? What this… bromance with Lance means to you.”

Okay. So Pidge had half-figured everything out. And yet, she was still giving Keith too much credit. She still believed his half-assed lies. Because she trusted him.

Keith’s neck started itching again, inside his sweaty uniform, and his heart sank to his stomach. He felt a little sick. “Yes,” he finally said. “You’re right.”

“Not like it’s any of my business anyway!” Pidge went back to being her carefree self, legs crossed on the floor and a million tablets spread around her.

“You can press the red button and come back here,” she shouted to Lance, without bothering to activate their comms.

“Roger that!” Lance shouted back.

Keith couldn’t help but notice that pressing the red button did absolutely nothing. Score ten million to Pidge, who - meddling antics aside - was actually working on something pretty important.

Now that she had hacked the ship’s system, she rebooted the whole thing and sent some access codes to Kolivan - who apparently wanted to turn the vessel into a mobile-base for the Resistance. “It’s not a bad idea, but we’ll need to set up a million firewalls and do a billions checks to be sure that the Galra won’t track the ship back or intercept our communications.”

“How long will it take?” Shiro’s voice through the comms.

“Five or six days? I mean quintants,” Pidge gave Keith an apologetic look: that kind of work on the ship would delay their return to The Mud Planet. He shrugged: “It’s fine. This is important for the Blades.”

“And for the Voltron Coalition as a whole!” Allura’s voice piped up.

“Yeah, no problem,” said Lance, rejoining Pidge and Keith by the control panel. “Keith can handle it!”

Pidge nodded. “Okay, one problem solved. There’s another thing, though Shiro...” Was there a hint of evil pleasure in her voice, or was Keith imagining it…?

“What is it?”

“Galra technology can be a little tricky when it comes to deep space transmissions. Hunk and I can set the whole thing up, but we might need a third opinion on the matter.”

“What do you mean?”

Keith imagined Shiro in the Castle: standing beside Allura, back straight, arms crossed, right eyebrow raising in wonder.

Pidge licked her lips. Her pointy fangs were well visible now. “I’d be more confident if we had help from an _expert_ in alien technologies.”

“..."

“You know, some _genius_ wizard―”

“...Pidge.”

“―that could calculate all the _probabilities_ _―_ ”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“―of Kolivan’s plan backfiring.”

“Please, Katie.”

Pidge raised her hands in fake apology. “Sorry, Shiro. I’ve already called him.”

Keith would have laughed a lot less if he had known Slav was one of the universe’s leading experts on bugs.


	4. -Something’s bugging Keith-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone for their kudos, comments and bookmarks.  
> And thanks for pointing out stuff that needed to be fixed, whether it was a small typo or a bigger mistake! ♥  
> And now: back to SLAV.

**.Day Eight.**

 

“Did your rash change color?” Slav asked.

“In a scale from one to eighty-four, how painful would you say the Barbatullian Leviosa’s bite was?” Slav inquired.

“After the Barbatullian Leviosa bit you, did you experience high fever, weight loss, increased production of sebum, or strong sexual attraction to quadrupeds?” Slav pestered.

“ _No,_ ” Keith denied for the umpteenth time.

“Oh, good!” Little fingers pressed little buttons on a little tablet. “I was just making sure ours wasn’t _one of those realities_.”

“It isn’t!”

Slav squinted.

Keith growled. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know more about ‘one of those realities’. Actually, he didn’t want to know more about this one either, if Slav was the one doing the explaining. All the weird alien had done since he had gotten there was poking at Keith’s neck, second-guessing every single one of Pidge and Hunk’s equations (take that, Karma!) and annoying Shiro to the point Keith feared an aneurism was imminent.

Twenty seven ticks of blissful silence. Then Slav attacked again: “And how would you describe the tingling in your―”

The healing pods’ alarm went off. It was a nice, overly loud sound that alerted Pidge that Matt’s vital signs had suddenly improved; but it wasn’t just a simple status update this time.

Keith supposed there were worse ways to wake up than having Slav’s face peering down at you. Matt, however, didn’t seem to share his opinion: the first thing he did once his pod slid open was grab Slav by one of his flailing arms and throw him to the other side of the room, where he bounced on Hunk’s well-toned chest and fell to the floor with a loud clunk.

Shiro probably hugged Matt harder because of that, almost crushing Pidge between her brother’s body and his own. As the tears started falling, Keith took his leave.

“Remember your Poothingie,” Slav mumbled after him.

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith remembered his Poothingie. He remembered it twice a day as he religiously applied it on the back of his neck and his upper shoulders, until even the best Altean soaps couldn’t wash the sugary-sweet smell away. He felt like a giant bubble gum.

 _That_ was what was distracting Keith during dinner, the evening Matt came out of his healing sleep: his own strawberry scented skin. Not the way Hunk kept sniffing and wiping tears. Not Lance’s anxious chattering, as he moved his chair away from Keith and to the other end of the table. Certainly not the eager glances Shiro kept throwing at Matt, like he was afraid his friend would disappear again.

“And the arena? Did they ever throw you in an arena again? Or was it the mining camps? You got at least five scars I have never seen before. Is that from your appendicitis? I don’t remember that being there from your old appendectomy. Did any of the other prisoners even had appendicitis?” Pidge was firing a million questions a minute, continuously switching between finding new words to insult the Galra and begging Matt to tell her more about what happened to him.

Keith noticed everyone was careful not to mention Sam Holt. The fate of Pidge’s father was a conversation for another time.

“Pidge, let him get his strength back,” Shiro nudged another plate of food goo in Matt’s direction. That would have been his… _three, four… five..._ his fifth bowl. He was about to break Lance’s personal record.

Matt put his spork down. “It’s alright, Takashi. After all, I never thought I would miss Katie’s incessant questioning so much.”

Pidge put up her best affronted look, the one she has learnt from Lance. “How dare you!”

Matt laughed. “I almost didn’t recognize you, to be honest.”

“A lot has changed,” Pidge’s hand went to her hair, and she glanced at Shiro’s right arm.

Matt gave them both a sad smile. “I noticed. But I’m glad you two found such wonderful friends,” he looked at Coran and Allura, who had been silently watching their conversation.

“We are the ones who are glad the Paladins found us,” Allura smiled her best Princess smile. “We would have never made it this far without them.”

Coran puffed his chest, mustache proud: “They’re not the best and brightest the universe has to offer,” he declared. “But they’re _our_ not best and brightest!”

A beat.

Allura cleared her throat, embarrassment clear on her face. Matt just laughed, no hint of malice in his voice. “That’s what I’ve always thought about my sister, Coran.”

Pidge stomped on his feet. And war started again.

Keith honestly couldn’t keep up with all the insults currently being traded, the amount food goo being wasted and the excited slash-fearful slash-unintelligible yelps Lance was letting out. He reached for his juice box and watched it all unfold from a careful distance.

“Man, this is so weird,” Hunk whispered to him on his way to the kitchen. “It’s like Pidge went through some weird parthenogenesis. And now there’s two of them.”

“One is taller”, Keith said, munching on his straw while taking another peek at the Holts.

Hunk gave him a smile and a pat on the back. Still chuckling, he went back to his task: get more food goo to sustain the clone war.

Keith sucked a little harder on his straw. While Shiro tried calming everyone down and Coran joined the fray, he was busy watching Lance. The Blue (Red?) Paladin had kept nodding and smiling since Matt got out of the healing pod. Lance ‘oooh’ed and ‘aaaw’ed at all the right parts, leaning forward on his elbows, mouth agape and eyes bright when Matt revealed something new and fascinating about his fight with the Resistance. A perfect picture of wonder and fascination.

A perfect _charade_ , rather, spoiled only by the fact that Keith knew exactly how perfect charades were orchestrated.

Throughout the whole meal, Lance hadn’t asked a single question. Even now he was just standing there, a foot on the floor and a knee on his chair, like he didn’t know whether he should throw food goo around or just sit back and enjoy the show. He had a huge grin on his face and a spoon full of goo in his hands. He was taking aim; but he wasn’t firing a single shot.

Keith felt something touching his hand. He looked down to find the little blue mouse, Chulatt, bumping her snout into his palm in an effort to get his attention. He frowned. Chulatt’s little paws pointed somewhere on his right, where her friends were busy staring at Allura with something similar to confusion on their little mouse faces.

Allura was watching the group on the other side of the table with a strange longing in her eyes.

“Are you alright, Princess?” Keith leaned towards her, half-whispering.

No answer. Keith touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Allura,” just a little louder, “are you alright?"

She seemed to snap out of her trance-like state. “Yes,” she said, eyes unfocused. “Yes,” she shook her head. “I was―” She stopped and smiled as another laughter reached her ears. The food war had given space to a new burst of revelations: a dungeon, a mining colony and an alien cat were involved. Pidge was swearing a lot.

“I’m so happy Pidge has finally been able to find her brother,” Allura brought her hand to her chest. “It’s too easy to forget how that kind of happiness looks like.”

“I guess so.” Keith wasn’t sure of his answer. Cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, a childlike joy filling his heart down to its smallest part. He didn’t think _he_ had looked like that when they had found Shiro again - but he wasn’t in the habit of looking too often into a mirror.

Allura straightened her back. “I’m afraid this reunion might delay our return to the LeRoy System for a little longer. Pidge might be a bit distracted now.”

Keith squinted. _The LeRoy System?_  “Oh, right.” That was where The Mud Planet was.

“You’ll have to wait a few more quintants for your cure.”

Keith shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m… used to it by now.” That wasn’t entirely true, but Allura didn’t need to know that. Besides— “Pidge is very focused. She might even work faster with Matt here.”

Allura’s lips curved into an understanding smile. “You’re right,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about.” But her eyes were telling a different story. Keith could tell she was worried about something else. Something she wasn’t comfortable talking about with him.

That moment, Lance turned his head in their direction. When his eyes found Allura’s, his mask cracked. It was just for a moment - for a horrible second his smile died and the light in his eyes gave away to emptiness -  and then Lance went back joking around with the others, like nothing happened.

“You made strawberry shortcake?! Hunk, you’re a genius!”

“Thanks, Lance. I have my moments.”

Keith was hit by a sudden realization. Allura had never been interested in Pidge and Matt: she had been looking at Lance for the whole time. And that, for some reason, made him aware of something he still couldn’t grasp.

His fingers tingled in wonder.

  


**.Days Eleven to Thirteen.**

 

Keith had been right: Pidge’s focus was razor sharp as always.

Hunk had also been right: the Holts were like two hyperactive clones.

Matt had decided that his sister’s latest science project was a good way to get back to the Galra. He immediately started helping Pidge out on the stolen spaceship, giving her and Hunk the intel they needed to turn the vessel into a perfect weapon for the Blades. Apparently, Matt had overheard a lot of interesting stuff during his captivity, and was more than eager to share what he found out during his brief dalliance with an extremist fringe of the Resistance (“Those guys are insane, and I don’t mean it in the _woah!-how-cool_ way”).

At one point Matt apologized again to Kolivan, whom he had shot when he still believed all Galra were evil creatures from hell. Kolivan, being Kolivan, simply shrugged Matt’s worries away: “The Blades of Marmora are used to that kind of bias and fallacies.”

Keith wasn’t a Blade. He still felt his stomach drop whenever someone seemed to treat him differently because of his unwelcome heritage. And yet, he was guilty himself of those very same prejudices. Whenever he met a new Galra, hybrid or not, his muscles tensed and his senses sharpened, like his body was getting ready to fight a potential enemy.

Keith had never trusted easily. Now he also had to face the fact that he might never will.

He punched the closest wall, trying to clear his thoughts.

There was a strange stillness in the Castle of Lions. With half of the team working on the Galra ship, he didn’t have much to do outside of training in the simulation room and hiding from Slav. Keith suspected that the alien was feeling very neglected by Shiro and was looking for a new favorite Paladin to torment with his ramblings. Well, _good luck to him_ : Keith had already had enough for the day. He went looking for Lance.

Keith still hadn’t smiled like a lovesick fool today and he didn’t want to raise suspicions. After all, it’s not like the Love Bug’s bite effects could disappear overnight, right?

Rubbing his sore neck, Keith wandered to the observation deck, where Lance was usually found daydreaming about parades, ‘hot alien babes’, and the Paladins triumphal return to Earth.

He was right again: Lance was there, sitting on the steps that surrounded the monitoring unit. He was looking up at a map of the universe, stars and planets twinkling over his mournful eyes. He wasn’t alone.

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

Allura’s voice turned Keith into a salt statue. He froze, hidden in the half-shadows of the room, unheard and undetected, almost too - what? Afraid? Confused? _Embittered_? - to breathe.

Lance was looking at the stars, and Allura was looking at Lance: Keith dug his nails into his palms until it hurt.

“Don’t worry, Allura. I need just a little time.”

“Is this about Pidge?” It wasn’t a question, so Lance didn’t answer. “You’re happy for her.” Allura said.

“Of course I am! I’m just— I’m just―” Lance run his hand through his locks in frustration. His hair had gotten longer lately; it made him look older. Tired.

“You’re jealous,” Allura said. Her hand had found Lance’s shoulder and was resting there, welcome and soothing.

Keith looked away. Now it was just their voices.

“Yes. And no. I can’t really put it in words.” A male, upset one.

“I can see that.” And a female, wise one.

They balanced each other.

“I was her sort-of-big brother and now… now Pidge doesn’t need me anymore.”

“Of course she does!”

“I―”

“Pidge still needs you, Lance. We all do. But love comes in many different forms.”

“I _know_ that. But thinking something is not the same as _feeling it_ , you know?”

“I see.”

“And then I get so angry at myself…. You can’t believe how much I’d like to punch myself in the face, Allura! I should be happy for her―”

“Which you are.”

“—And I’m here all wallowing in misery instead of, I don’t know, throwing Matt and Pidge a parade or something!”

Allura chuckled. “You do love your parades.”

“Parades are awesome,” Lance said.

A rustling sound. Someone sat up, casting shadows on the walls.

Keith dared to peek again.

Lance was still looking at the holographic map of the universe, eyes focused on the lonely quadrant where Earth stood a long, long way from there.

Even Lance’s voice seemed to have traveled a great distance when it reached Keith again: “I wonder if I’ll ever see my family again.”

“You will,” there was no doubt in Allura’s words. She stood up as well, a fierce determination in her eyes. “You _will_ go back to Earth. And you _will_ be with them again.”

Keith was taken aback by his own reaction.

Anger.

An anger so brutal that could have easily turned a whole world into dust.

Keith bit his tongue and swallowed his screams. Going back to Earth? Be with their families again? _You can’t promise that, Princess! Nobody can!_ When were they supposed to return home, uh? Before of after they won a war that had been raging on for millenia?!

Keith knew what it meant to have all hope taken away from you. And Allura was not even giving Lance hope: she was feeding him lies that would wake Lance up in the middle of the night, air gone and chest burning. ‘Just a planet further away from home,’ he’d think; ‘Just another mission,’ and then another one, and another one: ‘I’ll be back soon’: little steps towards a truth that couldn’t be denied any longer.

_There is nothing true about your life._

“I would like to see your blue planet as well, someday.”

Keith felt blood in his throat. _Stop it! Stop it! Stop hurting him!_ He wanted to shout at Allura, tell her she had no idea what she was doing, that she needed to stop talking right now. But when he turned to look at her, the words wouldn’t come: they died on his lips, silenced by the loud thumping of his heart. Lance was smiling. _Stop it, please._

“Someday,” Lance said, soft and happy. He looked at a small blue dot on that huge blue map, and all the fight left Keith’s body. From a statue of salt, to a shapeless pile of rugs.

Keith would have let himself sink through the floor, if not for Allura’s next words: “You should let yourself be loved.” She moved a strand of hair away from Lance’s eyes.

“We talked about this, ‘Lura. I can’t―” Lance’s voice wavered, and his head shot up, looking for something “Do you smell strawberries...?” He sniffed the air.

 _Crap_.

Keith brought a hand to his neck and cursed Coran, Slav, and every Altean ever for not giving the Poothingie such an obnoxious smell. He ran away before Lance and Allura could spot him: always unseen, always hidden in the shadows.

 

• ◘ •

 

Sweat, anger and shame. Keith scrubbed and scrubbed until his skin turned red under the hot stream of the shower. He didn’t know how long he stayed in there; long enough to miss his usual afternoon sessions with the Gladiator and a nice dinner, probably.

He didn’t even know why he felt like that. He had known that Allura and Lance had been getting closer lately. He just… he hadn’t imagined their relationship would have evolved _like that_. The Princess was all business-like, an avenging angel dead-set on ending Zarkon’s (and Lotor’s) reign. And Lance was… well, Lance had always flirted with Allura, but that was a part he was playing, right...? That was what Hunk said, and Hunk never lied (“Lance doesn’t _expect_ to be taken seriously. And when that happens, he panics like you wouldn’t believe!”). Was that panic, that Keith had just seen in Lance’s eyes? Or had he been witness to something he couldn’t understand…?

Keith wished he knew how other people loved. His way of feeling things didn’t seem to be the right one.

“ _Stupid Lance._ ”

Muttering to himself, Keith wiped the water away from his eyes. Then, for the first time, he actually wondered how many days were left until they could return to The Mud Planet. He wasn’t so sure he could keep up with his farce anymore.

He turned on the hot water and scrubbed and scrubbed for _days_ , like he was trying to make himself invisible and undetectable: ready for a stealth mission in the heart of the Galra Empire. He scrubbed until his skin felt raw and bruised and his neck started bleeding.

He stood there, in the pink water, like he was trying to wash his stupid feelings for Lance down the drain.

And then he collapsed on the bed. “This sucks,” he mumbled into his pillow. Life sucked. Love Bugs sucked. _He_ sucked. Lance s—

“Mullet!” A Cuban hurricane knocking on his door with the cheerfulness of a hyperactive shark.

“What do you want?” Keith grunted, irritation clear in his tone. He kicked himself for the startled silence that followed. He was supposed to be in love with Lance. He was supposed to be _nice_ and _sweet_ and overly devoted to him. And he was. He really was. He just couldn’t show it the way he wanted.

Soulful sigh, saccharine tone, and a smile that was already hurting his cheeks: Keith forced himself out of bed and opened the door. “Yes, Lance. What can I do for you?”

Lance looked as weirded out as he felt: “I… uhm―”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering―”

“Yeees.”

“Well…”

“Uhn?”   _What is it, you long-winded menace?! Just leave me alone!_

Lance licked his lips and squared his shoulders: “Are you feeling well, Keith?”

The question made Keith’s fake smile falter a little. “Yes?” he asked. Lance couldn’t have figured everything out, right? He _never_ figured anything out! Well, he did. But not in the way everyone expected him to and—

Keith didn’t know where to look now, so he looked at the tip of his own fingers, rubbing them together the way he did when he was about to start to cry and-. _Crap, crap crap CRAP_. “Yes, I am fine,” he forced another smile. “Why?”

Lance scratched his nose. “You just seem a little… off.”

“I seem… off?”

“Well, yeah,” Lance started making weird gestures with his hands again. “You’ve been avoiding me again, and training all alone, and you stopped saying weird cheesy stuff. Slav says you don’t complain about his poking and prodding anymore. And man, that’s a weird kink to have. Is it all the little hands that do the trick for you? He has tiny raccoon-like hands. My sister showed me this photo of hundreds of raccoons trapped under a porch once. They were sticking their hands out from under the wood planks and that gave me nightmares for _weeks_ , literally weeks!, so when Slav tries to touch _me,_ I remember that and get all squirmy. Really, I don’t get how you can stand still when he does his weird testing stuff! I won’t judge if it’s the little hands, I swear: whatever floats your boat, man. But yeah. Something is definitely wrong with you, Mullet. You’ve never let me rant this long before!”

Keith’s eyes refused to unglue themselves from the cellar. “I’ve been bitten by a Love Bug, Lance.”

“Oh, right,” Lance deflated like a balloon. “I forgot about that.”

“You forgot _what_?” He couldn’t be serious!

Lance paled, then went through the whole rainbow before settling for a pale blue color: “I meant that I _tend_ to forget about the stupid Love Buggy situation. Except when you make fun of me and go overboard with your declarations of love, of course.”

“I don’t make fun of you!” Keith barked, hands becoming fists. He probably looked murderous right now. And the most irritating part? Lance seemed to enjoy it. “What the hell are you grinning about?”

“The angry dropout is back.” Lance said.

Keith's jaw dropped.

Lance kept grinning. “It feels so unnatural when you’re not rude to me at least once a day!”

Keith gifted him an epic facepalm, hiding a small smile behind his hand. “What did you want anyway, Lancey Lance?” _The hopeless idiot._

“Oh, right!” Lancey Lance was back into hyperactive mode. “Do you want to train with me?”

“With the Gladiator?”

“Yeah! You like that guy!”

“Well, I’d like to, but…” Red towel hanging low on his hips, fingerless gloves, one sock: Keith scratched his head, bringing Lance’s attention to his wet hair. And it was only then that the man who never noticed anything finally seemed to take in the fact that Keith had just gotten out of the shower.

“Oh.”

Keith shrugged. “I could still―”

“No!” Lance extended his arms forward, shaking his head. “No, no no no! Then you’d have to take _another_ shower! Do you know how bad that would be for your skin?”

“Uh… no?”

“‘Course you don’t!” he rolled his eyes. “It would be a disaster! Especially if you have some _fluffy G_ alra gene somewhere in your―”

“Lance”, Keith was about to scream again. “End rant. _Focus_.”

“We could do a different kind of training.”

Keith faltered. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know where this was going. “What kind of training?”

Lance grinned. “Just put some pants on,” he said.

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith put some pants on. _And_ a shirt, his jacket and even some shoes. And then Lance killed him eighteen times in the short span of five ticks.

“How.” He gaped at the screen.

“Dude, you just plain _suck_.” Lance’s bafflement was downright irritating. “I really don’t get how someone with your kind of instincts can suck so much at this, to be honest. I’m amazed by your suckyness.”

“That’s not even a word!” Keith protested.

Lance dodged, grabbed, and pulled. Keith was dead again. “ _Crap_!”

“Amazed!” Lance reiterated. “Seriously: are you being this lousy on purpose?”

Keith thought about adding another lie to his increasingly long list of half-truths, but in the opted he conceded defeat. “I never played before, okay?”

“You what?!” Lance was flabbergasted. “How?" he paused the game. “Why?!”

“I was never interested,” _I had no-one to play with,_ “And I preferred real life stuff to simulators anyway.”

“Well, I don’t know about that: I wouldn’t enjoy being cut in half by a chainsaw in real life,” he pointed at the screen, where Keith’s character was currently frozen mid-death in a gratuitous display of gore.

Keith made a face and set his controller aside. “Well, I wouldn’t enjoy _that_. I tried racing games.”

“Of course you did.”

“...I wasn’t really good at those, either.” Keith didn’t know why he said that (it was true, but also something he was a bit ashamed of).

“Dude!” Lance sat up on his knees, sliding closer to Keith with a huge, deranged smile. “I hated the simulator _so much_ back at the Garrison!”

Keith was about to tell him a videogame and an advanced simulator were hardly the same thing, but Lance’s enthusiasms wouldn’t let him get a word in. “I crashed all the time. Completely wrecked the ship! And that’s when Hunk actually managed not to puke! Did you crash often too?!”

Keith never crashed the simulator. He had a rough landing once, the first time he got into a ship, because he had tried to pull off an emergency maneuver he had seen Shiro doing. But he couldn’t tell that to Lance. He didn’t want to. But he didn’t want to lie either; he did enough of that already. “I… scratched the ship a couple of times,” he said.

“Oh,” Lance frowned. “Perfect score otherwise?”

Keith cleared his throat. “No. Not really. Iverson didn’t believe in perfect scores, even with me.”

“That S.O.B.,” Lance said, spelling the dots. He gave Keith his controller back. “Well, that means you can help me practice with the simulator. And I can help you stay alive, right?”

Keith wet his lips. “I… guess so.”

That seemed good enough for Lance. They started playing again, and somewhere along the line Keith even begun figuring out how the whole videogame thing worked. Lance was surprisingly good at giving directions - so much that at one point Keith wondered if he used to do the same thing with Pidge.

“Oh, shit!” Keith missed a jump and fell down a hole.

While Lance was keeping enemies away one floor up, Keith somehow knocked down a wall. SECRET BONUS!, said the screen. Keith leveled up.

Lance bounced on the sofa. “You cheater!!!”

Hunk laughed. He and the Alteans had been watching the two of them play for a while now. “Keith doesn’t know half of the rules, man. I doubt he could cheat even if he wanted to.”

“Somehow he’s still doing it.”

“I think he’s just pressing random buttons.”

Hunk didn’t know how right he was. Keith _actually was_ just pressing random buttons. So he said nothing and focused on knocking Lance down a wall - aaand somehow managed to kill his own character in the process. How metaphorical of him.

“I think that’s a new record.” Hunk said.

They got to the last boss before failing the mission and dying. It was still not enough for what they had in mind: Lance had convinced Keith to complete a Quest (capital letter Absolutely Needed) where they had to beat the game without losing all of their hearts.

“You really improved your teamwork,” Allura clapped her hands. “Maybe we should include some of this videogaming in the Paladins’ training regime, Princess,” Coran suggested. “I do believe this could prove an excellent team bonding exercise.”

Lance went back to the main menu. “Okay, one more game, Mullet! And this time, try not to cheat!”

“I didn’t―”

“KP One? I didn’t know they had that in space!” a new voice said.

Matt was at the door, looking around the room like its occupants were the weirdest thing space had to offer. Maybe he wasn’t to blame, all things considered: Keith spread on the sofa, shoes long forgotten; Lance sitting cross-legged on the floor with Hunk’s bandana tied around his head (“He’s engaged combat mode, don’t say anything about it or he _will_ hit you!”), and Hunk himself in a chair munching on some goo-chips. Allura and Coran sat at the table, taking notes of the game progress. Keith imagined they saw the whole videogaming thing as some kind of cultural exchange.

Pale and smelling like she was in dire need of a shower, Pidge climbed beside Keith on the sofa. Her boots left a trail of grease on the cushions. “Yeah, Lance and I bought a Mercury Game Flux at the space mall. Took me and Hunk a while to figure out how to plug it into the Castle’s system, but it was worth it.”

“I still owe you a Kaltenecker for that one, Pidge,” Lance said, killing zombies on the screen.

Keith moved his character to the right and saved him from getting eaten by a vengeful ghoul.

“I thought you weren’t very good at this,” Shiro told him.

Keith shrugged. “I’m learning fast. And I want to finish this quest.”

“It’s _Q_ uest!” Lance piped up. “You need to pronounce that capital Q, like I told you!”

“How can you even tell―”

“What Quest is it?” Matt asked.

“Demogorgon’s Wrath,” Hunk said.

“Are you insane?” Pidge groaned. “That’s worse than the original Kobayashi Maru!”

 _Koba-what?_ , Keith decapitated an enemy.

“What’s that?” that was Coran.

“A simulation impossible to beat!”

Allura leaned over. “Maybe they just need to confront this Quest with the right attitude?”

Pidge formed an X with her arms. “No, it’s literally impossible to make it to the end without dying less than four times. The game’s been designed that way.”

_What?_

Matt made a _hmmm_ sound. “That’s why they made the Gauntlet that gives you infinite lives, right?”

“Right,” said Pidge.

“Pity that was a limited edition and you don’t have it.”

“Oh, we do have one. Lance just isn’t using it.”

A giant cat with blue wings bit Keith’s head off. “WHAT,” he turned around, startling both the Holt siblings and Shiro, who - judging by the state of his greasy uniform - had been doing some menial work in the engine room of the Galra ship. “What?” they chorused.

“You just killed the both of us,” Lance complained, pointing at the GAME OVER screen.

Keith was having none of it. “You’ve kept me here for I don’t know how many hours―”

“Three and half vargas,” said Hunk.

“—Trying to make me beat a game that couldn’t be beaten?!”

Lance blinked at him. “Yes.”

“WHY.”

“Because the point is not winning. The point is surviving as long as we can,” Lance stole one of Hunk’s chips. “Plus, it’s fun. Weren’t you having fun?” he added with a worried crunch.

Keith opened his mouth. Closed it. Said 'YES' in an angry whisper. He actually was having fun. Killing things and… videogame bonding. And _surviving_. He liked that, too.

“Oh good,” Lance said. “That was the important part. Wanna try the Quest again?”

Keith almost spit out an angry 'YES' when he noticed that Pidge’s right foot and leg were twitching nervously. She wanted to play. And Keith _knew_ that Lance loved to play with her: that was all they did when they needed some time to unwind after a tough battle. Keith had the Gladiator; Hunk had some complex mechanical problem… and Lance and Pidge had a horror game. “I can’t feel my fingers anymore,” he said.

Lance’s smile faltered a bit; then he saw Keith handing his controller to Pidge with a sharp “Here, you can kill Lance instead” and his lips turned upwards again.

Pidge was more than ready to ‘kick some Cuban ass’. “You ready, Losey Loser?”

“No, I had my share of cheaters for the day,” Lance took off Hunk’s bandana, turned around, and stretched his right arm towards Matt: “Wanna remind your sister she’s not the boss around here?”

Matt hesitated for a second, surprised, then took the controller from him. “You bet!”

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith made a mental note to never, ever play videogames against one of the Holts. “DIE, YOU SMELLY GREMLIN.” They were downright vicious, raunchy and more set on killing each other than beating the game. “TAKE THAT, YOU WINGLESS CATERPILLAR.” Keith felt kind of glad he and Shiro didn’t have _that kind_ of sibling relationship.

“I’m not so sure that this would be a good bonding exercise after all, Princess.”

“I agree, Coran. Maybe it’s not good for everyone.”

“Give him hell, Pidgeon! Destroy her, Pidge senior!”

Keith took his eyes away from the screen to look at Lance, who was rooting for Pidge and Matt in turns. He was smiling a true, happy smile. One he didn’t lose when he turned towards Keith. “Don’t think you’re off the hook, Mullet! We still have to play until we complete that Quest or our thumbs fall off. Whichever comes second.”

Keith frowned, confused. “But that Quest is impossible to―”

Shiro actually smacked him in the back of the head. Keith frowned. Shiro raised an eyebrow. Keith opened his mouth. Shiro sighed. And Keith _got it_. “Oh.” _Oh_!

Lance just wanted to play with him, like - no time limit involved. That was actually— “I’ll... I’ll try to keep you alive as long as I can,” he finally said to Lance, stumbling a little on his own words.

“Just feel free to cheat when you do that, Mullet.”

“I don’t cheat,” Keith said.

Lying though? Lying he was getting good at.


	5. -Little Posh Dresses-

**.Day Fourteen.**

 

Someone running. Loud steps hitting the floor. “Mullet!” A loud banging at his door.

It wasn’t Lance’s panicked voice. This was his happy, high-spirited, cannot-wait-to-tell-you-something squeal.

But Keith had gone to bed way too late that night and now it was way too early in the morning to fake enthusiasm. So he groggily disentangled himself from his warm sheets, scratched his neck, scratched his ass, and opened the door yawning. “Uhn?" he said.

Lance waved something like tickets at him. “We’re going to a party!” he screamed.

“Uhn?” Keith said.

“The Geek Squad finished to Voltronify the Galra ship! And the Bakugians decided to throw us a thank-you party! The Blades are coming as well!”

“Uhn,” Keith said.

“Well, Allura said it’s a _gala_ , which is the same thing as a party but fancier! We’ll need to get ourselves some fancy clothes! I should probably make some little posh dresses for the mice as well―”

“Uhn?” Keith said.

“Yes?”

“Is this gala party thing starting right now?”

“Uhm, no. It’s tomorrow night! Thank quiznak for that, otherwise I wouldn’t have the time to―”

“Lance.”

“Yes?”

“I love you, but I _will_ kill you if you ever wake me up this early again.” Keith shut the door right in Lance’s shocked face.

  


**.Day Fourteen (later, that early morning).**

 

Keith woke up, sat up on his bed, saw the invitation to the fancy gala party Lance had slid under his door, and abandoned all hope his ‘I love you, but’ had been the product of a particularly vicious nightmare.

He then proceeded to smother himself with his own pillow.

He sadly survived the experience.


	6. -A Gala Party Thing-

**.Day Fifteen.**

 

Lance had not been kidding about making ‘little posh dresses’ for the mice. He designed _and_ sew four small gowns and tuxedos complete with tiny hats, tiny gloves and tiny shoes - in several colors, so that each of them could choose what to wear.

Chulatt, the smallest mouse, had wanted a green gown. Plachu, the blue one, was wearing a red jacket. Chulele had picked a blue, frilly outfit that had earned her the name of ‘Space Cinderella’ from Lance. And Platt had opted for a top hat, a yellow shirt and a tutu-like gown. To say they all looked more elegant than Keith, in his ill-fitting jacket, was a severe understatement.

Allura was ecstatic: “You all look wonderful, my friends!” There were actual twinkling stars in her eyes as the mice struck several poses in front of her.

Lance gave her a smug smile. “You look wonderful yourself, Princess.” And she really did: Planet Bakugi was famous for its high-style clothing, and Allura was taking full advantage of it. She had opted for a silky white gown with pink and blue streaks: one of the several outfits she had tried out earlier that afternoon, during her shopping spree.

She had thrown out all her ‘moldy, old stuff’ and completely updated her wardrobe with the help of her top fashion advisors: Coran, who was determined to come across the most Altean-looking fabrics Bakugi had to offer, and Lance, who apparently had ‘impeccable taste’ and didn’t hesitate to tell Allura stuff like: “That doesn’t compliment your figure too much, ‘Lura.” If anyone else had even tried hinting that she looked _fat_ in that blue dress she was dying to buy, they probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to see the end of the day. But Lance was alive and thriving in pins, needles and tiny mice glass shoes. _Go figure._

Keith took some solace in the fact that he wasn’t the only one feeling highly uncomfortable in fancy clothes. Shiro kept tugging at his collar, Pidge had lost her jacket somewhere between the entrance hall and the buffet table, and Hunk… well, Keith hadn’t heard Hunk complaining even once that evening, but there was a reason for that. With Coran back at the Castle, Hunk was sitting next to Allura as his official chaperone for the evening. He was currently having troubles eating the canapés without bursting open the seams of his traditional Paladin Formal Suit.

The traditional Paladin Formal Suit (or PFS for short) was an instrument of torture. Too tight, too snug, and too form-fitting, it made Keith feel itchy all in the wrong places. The PFS came with an annoying undercoat and had what Lance had called tails. _Tails._ Why would someone need _tails_ on a jacket? Keith would rather have pockets that weren’t sewn closed - but _of course,_ whoever designed the PFS never even thought about the possibility of the glorious Paladins of Voltron wanting to blow their mighty noses. Keith had to hide his handkerchief in the waistband of his boxers.

He chugged down another glass of Nunvill, trying to forget his fashion woes. He immediately regretted it: the sour, clear liquid still made him feel like someone had just vomited down his throat. Keith grimaced.

“The nectar of the gods tastes better after the third glass,” a voice let him know.

Keith put down his empty glass. “Kolivan,” he greeted. The Blades’ leader had been lurking in the shadows of the balcony overlooking the huge ballroom. A good idea, considering that from up there he could see everything that was happening at the gala. Keith had had a similar one, looking for some quiet away from the chatty Bakugians and their unsolicited fashion advices. “Not mingling with the locals?” he asked.

Kolivan offered him a weary smile and a second glass of Nunvill. Keith accepted it all too gladly. It had been a stressful evening: avoiding Lance, listening to endless formal speeches about Love & Peace for the universe, and escaping the grabby hands of a couple of Bakugians who apparently found Keith ‘alluringly exotic’. And all of that when he and Lance had been _this close_ to defeat the final boss of Killbot Phantasm 1!

Keith drowned his second glass of Nunvill and scratched his neck. “Can Galra even get drunk on this?”

Kolivan seemed amused by the question. “If we put our minds to it, yes. This is one of the few drinks that could accomplish the feat, actually.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know what effects it could have on a human-hybrid like yourself, but yes.”

Keith shrugged and reminded himself to stop after the third glass. He couldn’t remember ever being drunk, now that he thought about it. The sight of two cadets puking profusely all over Iverson’s shoes during his second year had always stopped him from accepting the few drops of alcohol that got smuggled into the Garrison. A sudden flash of a high-pitched voice profusely apologizing on behalf of ‘Garret and Gunterson’ made him cringe. He tried to pass off his frustration as hunger.

Keith stole some appetizers from the closest buffet table and went back looking down at the ballroom, munching on some sort of spicy pizza rolls that were already burning his tongue. People had started dancing: Allura was deep into conversation with her Bakugian partner (Zordan? Zorak? Zedd? Something like that), while Shiro had been whisked away by a tall diplomat who seemed really interested in his assets. Luckily for him, Pidge ‘accidentally’ dropped some canapés on the floor. Shiro slipped and fell right into Matt’s waiting arms, where the Holt was ready to take care of his “It looks like it’s twisted!” ankle. Hunk’s worried cry didn’t need to be faked.

Keith swallowed his last pizza roll and went back nursing a cup of Nunvill. He noticed that sometimes the dancers stopped twirling around to look somewhere towards the edge of the room, like something was bothering them. Every time Keith followed their gaze, he would find a Blade standing there, hands crossed behind their back and head held high.

“I’m sorry they treat you like that,” Keith told Kolivan.

The Galra joined him near the balustrade. “We are used to that. And more importantly, we know why they mistrust us.”

“It mustn’t be easy.”

“Not recently, no. Lotor’s soldiers started posing as members of the Blade to undermine our reputation even more.”

Keith almost dropped his glass. “I— I didn't know that.”

“It’s something I wanted to discuss with all of you, actually. Our strategy will need to change from now on.”

Keith nodded. “Now I’m even more glad that the Bakugians decided to have you here tonight.”

Kolivan laughed. It was a weird sound: deep, humorless - a bit self-deprecating, maybe. “The Bakugians are nicer than most, but I think we’re only here because of your princess. She really put her foot down,” Kolivan tilted his head towards a small gathering of people below them, where Allura was talking with some local leaders. “It surprised me how quickly she changed her opinion of us.”

Keith had to quietly agree. The way Allura had looked at him - eyes full of mistrust and indifference - was still a painful memory to bring up; it’d probably always be. And now there she was, just a few months later, vouching for Keith and even for the full-blooded Galra that served under the Blade. “Yes, she’s great,” he said. And he really thought so.

Just then, Lance’s laughter reached his ears. Keith followed the sound to the very center of the room, where a small crowd of admirers had gathered to watch the Paladins of Voltron dance with each other. Lance had his hands on Hunk’s waist, dancing with his best friend without a care in the world. It was a sight that made Keith feel… content.

“I used to look at Antok like that, when I was young,” Kolivan said.

This time, Keith did drop his glass. At the noise, several Bakugians looked over at them: some annoyed, some worried. Fortunately, the glass was already empty and, unlike Keith’s dignity, made of something that couldn’t shatter into a million pieces.

“Wha―”, Keith didn’t know if he was more shocked, surprised or embarrassed by Kolivan’s remark. Pidge had been right: he had to learn to keep his ‘longing stares’ in check.

Kolivan laughed again, a real laughter this time. “Wasn’t I supposed to notice?”

“No. I… I’ve been bitten by a Love Bug.” Keith said.

Weird, awkward pause.

“Slav is gonna work on an antidote.”

“I see.”

Keith poured them another glass of Nunvill.

“So―” he started, but Kolivan beat him to it: “You should be careful, should you ever fall in love.”

That was a weird advice, coming from Kolivan. Keith tilted his head in wonder: “Why?”

Kolivan shifted his attention back to the dancers below them. “Galra tend to be very devoted to their mates. Very protective.”

Keith thought about Zarkon and Honerva’s story: what Zarkon did for her, even before the Quintessence basically consumed what was left of their— well, whatever the Galra equivalent of ‘humanity’ was. Their soul, maybe. He bit his lip: “Yeah, I know. Something Coran told us made it very clear. But… it’s not like I’d, like, lose my cool or something, right?”

“Lose your cool?” Kolivan echoed.

“Stop being able to control my instincts.”

“Don’t you already have trouble with that, Paladin?”

This time, Keith was positive Kolivan was making fun of him. He felt his cheeks going red, but his distress didn’t last long. Kolivan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Galra are not animals and do not have animalistic instincts, despite what some may say. However, hybrids often have trouble finding a proper balance and controlling their abilities, especially if they are not properly trained.”

That actually explained a lot. Maybe even the tingling Keith felt on his hands was related to this: abilities that no longer wanted to be ignored, or claws just waiting to come out. “And would you… would you train me?” he asked Kolivan. He didn’t want to put his friends in danger just because he was a hot-headed mess who couldn’t even figure out who he was.

Keith suspected (feared, really) that Kolivan would tell him he was too busy to help, but the Galra surprised him once again. He focused his penetrating eyes on Keith. “I’d be honored to.”

A tentative nod. “Thank you.”

Just then, Keith heard Lance’s voice again. Hunk was no longer dancing with him, and Not-Nyma - the grabby alien who simply _adored_ touching Lance in inappropriate places - hadn’t wasted her chance. Keith would have found her antics funny if not for how downright uncomfortable Lance looked with his arms around her.

He violently put down his Nunvill, startling a couple of innocent Bakugian bystanders, and closed his hands into fists, ready to march down there and rescue his friend. Two steps later, however, Keith’s help wasn’t needed anymore. Swift and graceful, Allura ended her conversation with a couple of Bakugian leaders with a well-thought excuse and went to rescue Lance herself. By the time Keith’s heart had calmed down, Not-Nyma was happily spinning around the room with Matt, who seemed to share his sister’s vicious love for trolling. Lance and Allura were dancing together, surrounded by a crowd of admirers.

“Yes,” Kolivan said, looking at the nails digging into Keith’s palms. “You definitely need some training.”

Keith decided to forget about his three-glass rule.

 

• ◘ •

 

Somehow, during the night he got roped into dancing (read: awkwardly standing with someone else’s arms around him) with all the Paladins. He accidentally stepped on Hunk’s feet, more-than-accidentally stomped on Pidge’s, and had trouble figuring out how to disentangle himself from Shiro. It was easier with Allura: she was a born leader and an excellent teacher, and she guided him through each step with the kind of patience that never failed to put everyone at ease.

Thanks to her, Keith’s mind was strangely calm when Lance tapped on his shoulder. “May I have this dance?”

Allura smiled. Keith took his hands away from her waist, ready to give her and Lance some moments on the dance floor. Just then, Lance grabbed his elbow and made him gently turn around.

Allura was already smiling up at Hunk when Lance bowed slightly in front of Keith. “So... do you want to lead?”

_RIP, Keith._

  
  


**.The very first hour of Day Sixteen.**

 

Nunvill started feeling pretty damn good after his fourth (or was it his fifth?) glass. Still: no fuzzy thoughts and no drunken haze. Keith was just a little hot.

He had had enough of the gala party thing, and the idea of small-talk with Kolivan or other Blades seemed awfully tiring at that point. He hid outside, in the quiet of a huge balcony. None of the guests were there: everybody seemed to have abandoned this part of the palace in favor of the sparkly ballroom, where the music, the food and the drinks all were.

Keith wondered, not for the first time, if being a good leader also meant he _had_ to pretend he liked boring people, boring peace talks, and boring everything else. It probably did. He sighed.

“What’s with the long face?”

Lance, of course, loved people - especially sad ones he could cheer up by pretending to be dumb. Keith shrugged. “‘m just tired,” he slurred.

Lance joined him, leaning on the railing and looking down at the palace gardens. By now, even he had turned his back to the hellish Paladin Formal Suit: he had lost his jacket and undone the first two buttons of his shirt. Lance probably had had a couple of glasses of Nunvill himself; or maybe that unusual shade of pink along his nose and cheeks came from all the dancing.

“Tired?” Lance chuckled. “You?”

“Social gatherings aren’t my thing.”

“They’re not mine either.”

 _That_ got Keith’s attention. Was Lance drunk?! “You love them!” he protested.

Lance shrugged. “Well, yes. But… I don’t know, sometimes it feels like I did nothing to deserve all the attention.”

 _Of all the idiocies to come up with!_ “Lance, you literally helped save whole planets.”

“Of course I did! But―”

“No ‘but’!” Keith was close to shouting now. “You need to stop putting yourself down!”

Lance turned around, leaning back on the railing: “Is this the Love Bug talking?”

Okay, now Keith was pissed. Honestly and thoroughly pissed. Lance needed to stop thinking so little of himself. He started yelling: “WHY WOULD YOU EVEN―” and then he stopped. Because Lance was grinning at him.

“You,” he said.

“Me.”

“...”

“...”

“You are the worst.”

_The little shit had been yanking his chain._

“Sorry.”

“The literal worst.”

Lance made a weird gesture with his arms. Something he had probably picked up from Pidge. “I saw my chance and took it, dude. Riling you up is too fun, and I had missed doing it.”

“Missed?”

Lance scrunched his nose. “Sometimes it’s like you stop yourself from… how do I put it? Telling me to go quiznak myself.”

“That’s not how you use that word.”

“It’s still true.”

Keith hesitated. “I still think that kind of things,” he admitted. “I just don’t say them out loud anymore.”

“Why?”

“...Why what?”

“Why don’t you say them anymore?”

Keith felt a gentle pressure mounting at his temples. “I’m… not sure.”

“Well, you can say them. Even now. If you want.”

Did he want to? ‘You’re such an idiot, Lance.’ Yes. Yes he did. He still wanted to say things like that to Lance; and he wanted to voice some more. He nodded.

Lance looked away, to the endless sky above them. “Good,” he said.

He seemed content right then: like an ordinary teenager without a care in the world, instead of a weary soldier with the weight of an intergalactic war on his shoulders. And Lance’s shoulders, although they were broadening and strengthening every day, were still too small for that kind of burden. Keith wondered, not for the first time, if he could have hidden behind them: nose pressed against the slight dip in Lance’s back, just below his neck; his hands around Lance’s slim waist. The thought immediately sobered him up.

_Five glasses to get drunk. GOT IT._

“So, you and Kolivan got all chummy?”

“What?” Keith’s world was still a little blurry.

Lance hadn’t taken his eyes away from the stars. “I saw you two talking earlier.”

That was a lie. Lance couldn’t have seen him and Kolivan all the way up from the ballroom, not where they had been hiding. Afterwards Kolivan had left to talk to some other Blades, so Lance couldn’t have known about his conversation with Keith either— not unless _Lance had asked Kolivan_ to talk to Keith in the first place. But Lance wasn’t that cunning.

...Or was he?

“Did you talk about Galra stuff?” The question came smoothly from Lance’s lips.

“Oh yeah,” Keith leaned forward again, eyes wandering through the gardens below. “Galra stuff.”

“Uh, uh.” Lance didn’t pressure him for more. And that’s exactly what told Keith that his fellow Paladin was really interested in what had happened. He chose his words carefully, afraid to reveal too much: “Kolivan offered to teach me how to deal with my Galra part.”

Lance frowned. “You never wanted to deal with your Galra part before.”

He was only half-right. The truth was: Keith had no idea what he should have done. No surprise there, right? But he wasn’t in the mood to tell Lance everything right now; he still felt too much shame about that hidden part of him. Not because of _what_ he was, but because of how much he still doubted himself. So he compromised. “No, I didn’t. But I guess there are things you can’t ignore forever.”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “There are.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, listening to the soft music coming from the ballroom. Keith wondered if he and Lance would share more quiet moments like this one, once Slav got him the cure for the Love Bug’s bite.

In the last few days, he had started wondering about what Lance really thought about this whole mess; if after taking so many steps forward, they’d turn the clock back, uncertain how to act around each other. Would they be friends? Rivals? Or something different…?

And who was he kidding? Even _now_ Keith didn’t know how to act around Lance. He changed his mind every few hours, torn between doubts and fears that once conquered came back again, stronger than before. What a mighty leader he was!

“Keith?” Lance’s voice was full of mirth. “Lance to Keith?” Lance poked him on the forehead. “You got lost in your headspace there.”

Keith focused again. “Sorry, I was just… thinking.”

“I noticed.” The finger was still there, treading down Keith’s right temple with surprising gentleness. Lance’s eyes were following its path. “It’s kinda cute when you do that.”

Keith felt a blush spreading on his nose and cheeks. He said nothing, and Lance’s fingertips went on to trace his cheekbone, coming down to his chin. A light, careful touch; ‘butterfly wings on his skin’, those stupid romance novels would have said.

“Lance…” His eyelids felt heavy. He should… he should stop this.

Lance’s thumb was dangerously close to his lips now. “I really don’t know what to do with you, Mullet.”

Keith’s eyes felt wet when they opened again. An unwanted tear fell down: a single drop of rain in the space between them.

Lance jolted backwards, like Keith had just struck him. “I’m sorry,” he said. His skin was pale; his pupils huge and scared. “I shouldn’t have— It’s not fair to―”

“Lance, it’s alright. I know, I―”, Keith tried to reach out for him, but Lance kept shaking his head and apologizing. “I’m so _sorry._ I’m such an idiot.” He started tugging at his own hair now, stumbling backwards, legs unsteady. “I shouldn’t have.”

Upset, Keith sprinted forward and grabbed Lance’s by his upper arms. He felt Lance shaking under his touch - or were those his own hands, trembling in fear?

“It’s okay”, Keith said, as calm as he could muster. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

Lance’s eyes widened in confusion: “Why would it be your―”

And that’s when the explosion knocked them both to the ground.


	7. -You’re trash!-

**.Day Sixteen, after the attack.**

Okay. Keith was pissed. Really, royally pissed. He was ready to tear apart a whole Galra fleet with his bare hands. And yet, that was nothing compared to how furious Pidge was in that moment.

“My baby!” she lamented, looking up at the sky. “My precious ship!”

The Galra command hadn’t taken it very well the re-purposing of their stolen vessel. So they blew it up. Luckily nobody had been aboard when they attacked.

“Not even Slav?” Shiro asked.

“Not even Slav,” Coran’s voice echoed through the comms. The Altean was still at the Castle, still in orbit around the Bakugi, doing a rapid account of the damages: one stolen ship lost, two Blades injured and already on their way to a healing pod, several hundreds Bakugians in a panicked state, and five diplomats kidnapped. Again. It was like those people _enjoyed_ being rescued.

“How did the Galra even get so close without us noticing?” Allura wasn’t happy.

Coran had been unable to detect the small enemy ship until it had entered the atmosphere and blew up their re-purposed Galra vessel. The explosion served as a distraction to launch a quick but successful attack on the surface, where a few sentries had managed to make the planet’s top diplomats vanish into thin air. But why were the Galra _leaving_ Bakugi like that…? They had at least a dozen fighters with them. Why the sudden retreat? Wouldn’t have it been more tempting to stay and take on Voltron…? 

Kolivan started to solve the riddle for him. “I’m afraid one of our newest allies might have double-crossed us and told the Galra how to hide their presence from your radars,” he looked distraught. “I take full responsibility, Princess. I should have vetted them better.”

Allura studied him  for a long, careful minute. “Find out who exactly betrayed us, then. The Paladins and I have even more pressing matters that require our attention right now.” She turned to address a few of the Bakugians officials who had gathered on the balcony: “Please tell your people to stay calm. Voltron will get your leaders back.”

The Bakugians all nodded gravely.

“Alright, team! Time to rescue the overly-friendly aliens!” Lance struck what he called his best hero pose, complete with his trademark ‘Lance-Wins!’ smile and fired his finger guns.

An incredulous cry: “You wore _that_ under your clothes?!”

Keith sighed: Uncomfortable Formal Paladin Suit forgotten, Lance was now sporting his black undersuit.

“Rule number one of a good Space Explorer, Hunk: always be prepared!”

“I think he’s mixing up two different classes,” Matt muttered under his breath.

But Hunk wasn’t done: “And you also brought a weapon _to a gala_!” he cried, pointing at Lance’s blaster.

“Like I’m the only one who did it!” Lance took aim at Shiro, who decided not to engage, and then at Keith, who had no choice but return his stare. When their gazes met, Lance quickly backtracked and returned his bayard to its original form. Keith swore to himself.

“Right.” Hunk sighed. “So what’s the plan?"

“ _Kill everyone and avenge my baby!_ ” Pidge screamed, eyes still locked on the debris falling from the sky. Somehow she looked even more menacing in her frilly green gown. Like an angry pixy princess. ...An angry pixy princess from Hell.

Matt slithered closer to Keith: “Just don’t let her know you’re afraid,” he whispered. “She can smell your fear.”

Allura wasn’t amused; she walked right to Matt and pulled him away by the ear. “That’s really _not_ the time,” she reprimanded. “We need to get back to the Castle.”

And so they did.

To Pidge’s dismay, Team Voltron final plan didn’t involve mass-murder, torture, or any sort of genocide. Nevertheless, at the time Keith thought their strategy would prove successful. And it would have, if their attackers had actually been Galra.

 

• ◘ •

 

There was a sentence Lance liked to use when he talked about his little niece and nephews, or when he was about to give a very ( _very_ ) detailed report of the mischief he and his siblings got up to during their childhood. That sentence was: ‘ _Sooo this crazy thing happened: this is how it went down’_.

So: this crazy thing happened. This is how it went down.

While Hunk and Allura distracted the enemy fighters with their Lions (“Why am I always the bait?!”, “Because you’re a delight, Hunk.”) and Shiro and Matt waited on standby at the Castle with Coran and Slav (“There’s a 6% probability we are all gonna die if I don’t scrub the floor right now!”), Keith, Lance and Pidge snuck inside the enemy ship aboard the Green Lion (“How dared they kill my baby!”).

It was a stealth mission. Keith was very glad he had stopped using the Poothingie: his neck itched like crazy, but at least the stupid bubble gum smell wouldn’t give his position away.

“This way.” Pidge guided them through tunnels and corridors, disabling security feeds and jamming signals until they found what they were looking for. Five Bakugians leaders: all scared, none injured, every one strangely unguarded and unchained, waiting in a dimly-lit cell. The only thing missing was a red ribbon.

Keith told himself he was being overly paranoid. After all, there was a battle going on outside: the Castle was busy taking down fighters, and Shiro was giving orders to the Lions through the comms.

He shared a look with Pidge, who frowned. “Maybe they chose to send all their soldiers away for… some reason?”

“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Keith said.

“Just don’t overthink it, guys,” Lance opened the last cell, helping another Bakugian to his feet. “We need to get out of here anyway.”

Their walk back to the Green Lion went pretty smoothly: no sentries, no soldiers, no _pew pew pew_ sounds over their heads - until a traitorous scumbag by the name of Zavin decided to make his move. 

Later - and way too late - Keith would discover that Zavin was the one who orchestrated the attack on planet Bakugi. The reason? Well, like Keith said, Zavin was a traitorous scumbag. Not in the same way the former leader of the Olkari was, though. No: Zavin had no interest in helping Zarkon out with his slavery business. Zavin was actually part of The True Resistance - the very same hot heads that team Voltron had rescued Matt from. Those crazy extremists considered anyone with ties to the Voltron Coalition a sellout. And why? Because they thought that working with ‘the unworthy Blade of Marmora’ _and_ accepting a half-breed as a Paladin were the worst thing anyone could have done.

The True Resistance had been trying to prove how weak and clueless Voltron really was and now they could go forward with item #2 on their To-Do-List: kill the undeserving Paladin. As in: they wanted Keith dead.

That didn’t take very long to figure out.

Zavin waited until they had their back turned before striking. He teased Lance with a weapon he had hidden under his prisoner’s uniform and kicked him down a dark shaft. It all happened so quickly, Keith didn’t even have the time to reach for his bayard.

“Lance!” the scream came too late. It only managed to summon Hunk’s worried voice through the comms: “Guys, what’s happening? I heard a scream. Guys? Guys!”

As soon as Zavin struck, the doors on both sides of the corridor burst open. Several sentries barged in, weapons ready or already firing. 

“What is going on there?!”

Apparently, team Voltron wasn’t the only one who liked hacking into Galra’s tech - and these droids had been reprogrammed to kill on sight anything with Galra genes. In their haste to cut Keith’s head off, they almost ignored a very angry Pidge and the Bakugians, who were too shocked to defend themselves anyway. Keith started swinging his word.

“Shiro, Coran: are you hearing this too?”

Shiro and Coral probably did, but Keith couldn’t make out their answers above Hunk’s panicked screams. He lost count of how many robotic limbs he cut. Ten, twenty; it felt like a hundred. But the sentries keep coming and he was getting tired and—

“Keith, duck!”

Keith ducked.

“ARE THERE DUCKS ON THE SHIP NOW?”

Pidge rolled on her side and used her bayard to give Zavin the best kind of payback: she electrocuted him unconscious. Then she went back defending the remaining Bakugian leaders: four tall, heavy characters almost two feet tall. They were huddling behind her tiny frame, too scared to leave her shadow. Keith would have appreciated the sight a bit more, if he wasn’t worried sick. “Pidge! Do you know where Lance landed?”

“Landed?! Who landed on what? Guys, don’t ignore me. I’m five ticks away from crashing Yellow into the Galra ship here!”

“Paladins, please answer us!”

“Keith, what is going on?”

“Don’t crash anything, Hunk. Allura, Shiro, we’ve got this, just keep distracting those fighters outside!”, Keith gave a final kick to Zavin’s stomach. Not his finest moment, but he didn’t give a quiznak. “Pidge?” he called.

“Gimme a tick!” Pidge took a quick swab at a last attacker. A jolt of electricity, and the sentry dropped like an unplugged mechanical doll. Pidge got to her feet and started tapping on the screen strapped to her arm: “Lance is two floors down from here, his vitals are fine but he’s probably unconscious. And I see five enemies moving in his direction.”

“That doesn’t sound like you got it, guys,” Shiro’s voice said.

Keith elected to ignore him and looked down the shaft. “Can we get to him from here?”

Pidge nodded. “Yes, but it’s not going to be a pleasant ride.”

“I’m going down,” Keith leaned over the edge. “You get the Bakugians to safety. Then see if you can find a way to help me and Lance get out of there.”

Pidge nodded. “Aye, captain!” and then: “I’m taking over this ship, you just watch me.”

Keith smiled. “That’s the spirit,” he said, and vanished down the shaft.

 

• ◘ •

 

The shaft was dark, cold and wet. It also smelt like a garbage can because that’s what the shaft was: a way to dump all the useless stuff into a trash compactor.

It was a long way down, and then a literal flight from where the shaft spat you out, into empty space, to the unstable damp several feet below.

There, lying on his back above a smelly brown bag on top of hundreds of other smelly brown bags, was Lance. His paladin armor was cracked in several places, on the chest and the wrists, and there was dirt all over his face; but he was breathing, and that made him the most beautiful thing Keith had ever seen.

“Lance!” Keith ran downhill, where Lance had rolled out after what must have been a very rough landing. Keith moved Lance’s head on his lap, checking for injuries. “Lance!”

Lance’s eyes opened, voice rough and strained. “Hey. Mullet. You’re cradling me into your arms again.”

“I am. Try to remember it this time.”

“Nope, never happened before!” Lance slowly sat up. “What’s this smell? Where are we?” His voice took a panicked note.

Keith let him go. “Welcome to Trash Hill!” he announced.

Lance looked like he wanted to barf. “It _stinks_. I’m gonna need _so many showers_ when we get out of here. SO MANY!”

Keith quietly agreed. The stench was already getting to him: his head started to feel weird, cotton-like and faint. For now, however, the showers would have to wait.

There were five sentries, just like Pidge had said: they started shooting from a door on the farthest wall, about five feet above their heads. Keith and Lance had to find cover behind an old wood-like plank; they were still trying to come up with a plan when someone turned on the trash compactor. Because _of course_ someone did.

“I’m too pretty to be trash-compacted!” Lance shot a couple of times to the closest sentry and took it down. Unfortunately, the next one was smart enough to close the door, locking them in.

“ _Quiznak_.”

Keith tried to reach Pidge through the comms. “No pressure, Pidge. But we really need you to hack this thing. Or we’ll die.”

“I’m on it. Just hold on!”

Lance stood up. “We need to climb up Trash Hill and reach that door.” He was right. So they climbed. They used the wooden plank and the least-gross trash bags to get close enough to their emergency exit. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded: the side walls were closing in on them, pushing the trash towards the center of the room and making Trash Hill more unstable by the second.

Keith and Lance stumbled down into the dirt just to climb up again, ready to dodge an attack from above. Hunk and Pidge were both screaming now, more distracting than useful in their panicked distress…. So Keith and Lance did a very stupid thing: they took off their helmets.

“I refuse to die smelling like Lotor’s old socks!”, Lance said with a dumb smile. “Ah, _refuse_. You get it?”

Keith groaned. “Just help me with―”, the door opened again.

They dived to the side just in time to avoid getting blasted into oblivion. At this point Keith was too pissed and too worried to let that door close again: while Lance jumped to grab the closest sentry by the ankle, he thrust his sword forward. Somehow, he did it: the door was jammed now. “Yes!”

His triumph was short-lived: the sentries were still following their orders, unafraid for their artificial lives, and the walls were getting dangerously close now. The room was now narrower than the cockpit of Voltron Lions.

When a bag collapsed under him, Keith lost his footing. Lance got him by the hips and kept Keith close to his own body, helping him avoid a new attack from above. Keith felt a chilly warmth spread through him, as if the laser had actually hit his neck and back.

The peak of Mount Trash (formerly Trash Hill) was now almost at the same level as the door.

Keith looked up at Lance, a plan already formed in his head. Then, before they could actually realize how dangerous their actions would be, Lance shoved Keith away and started shooting up at the sentries. “Here comes nothing!”

Keith used the distraction to lift himself up through the door. He retrieved his bayard and swiftly cut down another couple of robotic limbs, clearing the way. He didn’t take the time to catch his breath: Lance was still in the trash compactor.

He ran to the door and looked down. Lance was struggling with one of the sentries, who had no intention to let him climb back to safety. “Mullet, a little help! I’m about to be trash-compacted here!”

Keith reached out, but someone knocked him from behind, forcing him to look away. He heard a scream and a weird, metallic sound. “Lance!” he called. “Lance!”

His fingers were tingling to the point of itching; his head was splitting in two; his neck was on fire. And then, the security protocols of the ship kicked in: the door started sliding shut. With a roar, Keith cut off the head of his unexpected attacker and threw himself to the floor, reaching out to Lance throughout the narrowing opening.

Lance had disabled his enemy, but his right foot was stuck under something, and he was sinking along with Trash Mountain.

Keith leaned forward, eyes watering and lungs burning. Lance looked up. Determination. Hope. Fear.

Something gave away under Lance’s feet, and his hand slipped from under Keith’s grasp. “No!”, Keith roared, leaning forward. But he could barely touch Lance’s fingertips, and his stupid shoulders wouldn’t squeeze through the opening and...

Lance slipped down again.

“Keith.”

Was Keith crying now? He pushed forward.

“Keith!”

Almost there, almost there. Keith could feel the warmth of Lance’s skin again. Just a little bit further…. Their fingers brushed. Keith shifted his gaze to meet Lance’s. They looked into each other’s eyes. And everything stopped.

No. Literally. The walls stopped coming closer. The door stopped sliding shut. _Everything stopped._ Trash Mountain even seemed to spring a bit upwards. It wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Uh…” Keith poked at Lance’s fingers. He sighed in relief when Lance poked back, just to prove that he could.

“I’m not trash-compacted.” Lance clumsily disentangled his foot from the weight still pinning his foot down: an old chamber pot that had almost cost him his life. Then he blinked, knocked on the walls at his sides, and started touching his chest all over, grinning like a maniac. He threw his fist into the air, making Keith sigh in relief once again. “I’m not trash-compacted!!!”

“NO, BUT YOU’RE TRASH”, Pidge’s angry screams echoed through the ship’s comms, startling them both. “THERE WAS A PANEL YOU COULD HAVE HACKED _RIGHT THERE_ IF YOU IDIOTS HADN’T THROWN AWAY YOUR HELMETS.”

Keith didn’t know where ‘right there’ was but he could indeed see his and Lance’s helmets. The former had half-disappeared under what remained of a now-familiar wooden plank, while the latter was a smudge of blue and white amid the pile of garbage Lance was currently bouncing on. “Sorry Pidge,” Keith apologized. “I guess we, uh, panicked?” He extended his arm to Lance, who grinned: “Glad _you_ kept a cool head!”

Keith’s headache flared up as he lifted Lance through the door. The sudden pain made him lose his balance, and they both fell to the ground with a loud _thud_ : Keith on his back, limbs akimbo, Lance’s weight on his chest.

Palms on either side of Keith’s torso, Lance raised his head. He looked down at Keith with the softest smile on his lips: “I could kiss you right now, Pidgeon.”

“Yeah, yeah!”

Keith grinned up at Lance. “We love you too, Pidge.”

“I’m in the cargo bay, just hurry back up so Hunk doesn’t have a heart attack. You idiots.”

 

• ◘ •

 

At some point, Keith had apparently forgotten he was only _supposed_ to play the role of Lovesick Fool.

It happened fast. While he was busy  looking at Lance, and Lance was busy looking at him, something moved in the shadows behind them. Lance didn’t notice anything it, and Keith barely got a glimpse before he realized the danger they were in. But it was enough - thank quiznak it was enough.

He suddenly pushed himself forward, like he was about to kiss Lance. (Oh, he wanted to kiss Lance...!) But no: Keith rolled them both to the side, trading places with Lance, so that Keith was the one on top.

The sentry got him just above his right shoulder.

There was a scream, but Keith wasn’t sure who was screaming: himself, Lance, or Pidge. Maybe it was Hunk? Yes, there was a worried cry. So maybe… but maybe that was just a memory coming back to him.

Keith had many memories of people worrying about him. _Wasn’t it weird…? he was the one who was supposed to worry and... take care of people otherwise... they’d leave him. wasn’t that why they always left him...? being unable to say the right thing in the right way… and he_ _―_ _he felt_ _―_ _so_ alone _._

“—STOP THE BLEEDING!”

_Lance?, why was Lance screaming?_

“Press it down! Don’t let him move!”

So Hunk was there. and he was worried... that was nice of him... hunk was very nice...

“I swear we never used so much Poothingie before!”

Allura’s touch was nice, too. _warm and gentle…. like a mom’s should be... allura wasn’t his mom though - wasn’t she?... he hoped she wasn’t. that would have been so awk—_ “HOLY FUCKING QUIZNACK!” Keith jolted forward, unexpected pain bringing sudden clarity to his addled brain.

Allura pushed him back again, so that his head was resting on Lance’s thigh. “Stay still,” her voice was firm.

Keith felt hot and sweaty. His neck, shoulder and right arm were on fire. “What’s.... What’s.” He found it difficult to speak. Lance was looking at him again, but his expression was completely different this time; gone the mirth and the flushed cheeks, his lips were set into a grim line. He looked pale and… angry? Lance was angry at him, Keith realized. But why…?

Lance’s hands were suddenly gone.

Keith whimpered as Hunk’s arms lifted him up. “We need to put you into a healing pod, man. Right now.”

Keith shivered. He felt cold, then hot. And then he felt nothing.

He was alone again.


	8. -Unsafe & Cold-

**.Day Seventeen.**

 

Keith woke up.

Hunk didn’t sugarcoat it: “You almost died, man.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. There was blood everywhere,” Pidge said. “I almost fainted when I saw that. I’m surprised Hunk didn’t vomit when he and Allura broke in.”

“I was too worried to puke.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith sucked on the space lollypop Hunk gave him.

Shiro put a hand on his left shoulder. “You probably saved Lance’s life, you know? You did good.”

“Yeah.” He ‘did good’. But not enough. Still not enough.

 

• ◘ •

 

Lance didn’t want to talk to him.

  
  


**.Day Eighteen.**

 

They were going back to The Mud Planet without even reaching an agreement with the Bakugians.

Zavin’s betrayal had become a diplomatic nightmare: Allura wasn’t sure the issue could be solved in such a short time. She needed at least one week to sort things out - maybe two, if they wanted Pidge to find out more about the Galra ship the Evil Resistance had been using. But Lance put his foot down: they were going _now_. Not a tick to spare.

“Keith almost died because of me!”

Shiro tried to reason with him. “He would have done the same for―”

“NO!”

Keith had never seen Lance like that before. He was, well, _scary_. It was like the dark shadow that sometime he caught looming in Lance’s eyes has suddenly taken over his body.

“Keith let his guard down because of me.”

It was true. Keith couldn’t deny it. But Shiro was also right: he would have done the same for any of the other Paladins. The difference was: Keith wouldn’t have gotten distracted the same way he did with Lance, on that spaceship. He would have counted to five - _five sentries down_ \- instead of gazing up, relieved that Lance was alive and smiling down at him.

“He let his guard down because of a reaction to the Love Bite,” Shiro said.

Lance looked at him square in the eyes: “I’m not letting anyone die because of a Love Bite, Shiro.”

And Keith, who was tired and angry and guilty of everything and more said: “You’re right.”

Lance’s gaze shifted to him. He stayed silent for a few ticks before nodding to himself, apparently satisfied that Keith had seen reason. “Good.”

Keith nodded back: “I’ll get my antidote,” he told Lance. “And then we can forget everything about this mess.”

_But I will still love you_ , he thought. There was no cure for that.

Or was there?


	9. -The Slav Problem-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slav is baaaaaaaaaaack \0/

**.Day Nineteen.**

 

The Mud Planet was still cold, dark and wet. This time it was also surrounded by a dozen Galra ships.

“How many exactly?”

“Thirteen, Princess,” Coran’s hands moved quickly on the dashboard. “I think they plan to stay there for a long time.”

“We should wait.” Allura looked at Lance when she said it; and to everyone’s surprise Lance agreed with her.

“What? I’m not gonna get _everybody_ killed just to not get _Keith_ killed!” he howled.

And yet someone said it in his place: “We need to get down there now.”

Keith saw Shiro’s right eye twitch with barely restrained fury. When he looked down at Slav, it was with one of his creepy fake-cheery smiles. “And why is that?”

“Because otherwise Keith will die, of course.”

Silence. End of the creepy fake-cheery smile.

“Explain,” Shiro said.

Slav cleaned his ear with a pinkie. “The Poothingie is no longer slowing down the effects of the Bite on Keith’s brain. The venom has already started affecting his mobility and cognitive functions, as confirmed by the headaches, mood swings and sudden changes in blood pressure highlighted in the latest healing pod report. At this stage there is a 97% probability he’ll be dead within the next fifteen vargas.”

“What,” this time it was a choked whisper, coming from Lance. Keith himself was unable to speak: he felt like his brain was made of jelly.

Slav seemed confused. He checked something on his tablet. “Oh. I was 93% sure this was one of the realities where I had already told you that. My mistake.” Then, before Shiro and Hunk could reach him to choke the life out of him, Slav lifted one of his many little fingers. “But good news! This means this could be the one reality we _all_ survive the battle over the planet!” He nodded: “In all the others you die a very painful way, Lance.”

 

• ◘ •

 

They did, in fact, all survive the battle over the planet. Actually, they pretty much _destroyed_ most of the Galra ships in orbit over The Mud Planet, probably by imagining every single one of them was piloted by Slav.

And so they were back on the muddy surface, where Slav was acting like a kid on Christmas’ Eve. At some point Shiro had to tie a rope around his waist and use it as a leash, so he wouldn’t go off on his own chasing things. Not that that particular trick slowed him down.

“Ah! Oh! Eeeeh!” Slav kept pointing at different bugs, eyes sparkling and ears twitching, like The Mud Planet was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me!” Slav squealed in delight.

“In how many realities?” Lance tried.

“All of them!” Slav shrieked.

“Are we sure he’s alright?” Hunk whispered to Keith and Lance. “He hasn’t been talking percentages in at least half a varga.”

Slav, who had a very good hearing in their reality, turned towards them. “I am well, Paladins. I have a life expectancy of another 132 of your years in 98% of realities.”

“How wonderful,” Shiro muttered. He was serving as Slav’s personal carriage: the alien had climbed onto his shoulders to avoid getting stuck in one of the many mud puddles on the planet’s surface. From time to time, he asked Shiro to “Move! Run! Go around that tree!” to get a closer look at the bugs he spotted. He had even captured a few of them: several small butterflies and a couple of round creatures that looked like ladybugs. They were now resting in some glass jars inside Hunk’s backpack. No Barbatuallian Leviosa in sight for now, though.

Maybe Keith needed to bring the others to the Flintula’s lair.

“That is a terrible idea,” Hunk said. He was watching their backs, weapon drawn and ready to fire at the first sign of spiders of any kind. “We could get eaten!” he protested.

Slav gave him a stern look. “Flintulas only eat bugs.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.”

“However, they do kill other animals in order to chew their bones and use their skin as building material for their nests.”

Hunk stilled. “That is not a relief! That is certainly not a relief!” He started crying copiously.

Keith’s headache was not helping the situation. He leaned on a vine, feeling slightly feverish.

“You okay?” Lance asked him.

“I will be.”

“Ooh, here’s a Barbatullian Leviosa!” Slav pointed several small fingers towards a bush on their right. Keith followed his gaze. And there it was: the Love Bug was resting on a giant leaf, blue wings and little antennae twitching.

Shiro went into leader mode. “O.K., team. Let’s approach our target carefully. We’ll probably have only a few shots at this.” He started advancing slowly, one foot at the time. Keith and Lance were on his sides, ready to catch the Love Bug in case it tried to escape. Slowly…

“Shiro...”

“Not now, Slav.”

Slowly...

“Shiro.”

“Slav, I swear―”

“But this is―”

“And I said―”

“ _Guys_." This time it was Hunk.

They stilled.

They turned.

They followed Hunk’s gaze above their heads.

“Oh, _quiznak_.”

The Mad Spider and the Flintula were friends now.

 

• ◘ •

 

“I think we’re dead. Did we die? I feel like I’m dead!” Hunk was pale, scared and ranting.

Even Lance was having trouble calming him down. “We are fine, Hunk. We are fine, guys!”, he shouted through the comms.

In this part of the Forest all they got from the Castle was some static; they weren’t even sure their messages were getting through. Lance hugged himself: “We’re just a little roughed up.”

They had actually managed to escape the giant spiders’ attack, somehow making the Mad Spider say goodbye to three of his legs and blinding the Flintula. Still, Keith wouldn’t have called it a victory: they had lost sight of the Barbatullian Leviosa, who had taken off during the clash.

“They go back to their hives when they’re scared,” Slav said.

Keith massaged his neck. His nails came back slightly wet with blood. “So we actually have to get back to the Flintula’s Lair?”

“That would be my advice.”

Hunk hid his face into Lance’s shoulder, seeking comfort there.

Shiro sighed. “Fine, we’ll rest for a bit,” _to give Hunk time to calm down_ , “and then we’ll try again.” He stared at Keith, who nodded in return: “Fine with me.”

“I’m going to climb a little higher on these vines to see if I can contact the Castle. They’re probably getting worried up there.”

“I am worried down here!” Hunk said.

Keith got the end of Slav’s rope/leash from Shiro. “Just don’t get eaten.”

“Skinned and ground.” Slav corrected.

Shiro bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t plan to.”

As Shiro started climbing, Slav began rummaging through Hunk’s forgotten backpack. After a while, he stopped to admire the contents of one of the small glass jars he found. Some of the bugs had changed color, going from pink to blue or from black to red, like being trapped had somehow affected their appearance.

Keith sat down on a fallen vine. Another weird thing to add to the list of weird things they found on the Planet. And speaking of weird bugs...

“Hey, Slav.”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes. You just did.”

“...”

“...”

“...I want to ask another question.”

“Oh, of course.” Slav put down his jar.

Keith looked around. He wanted to be sure the others weren’t listening to their conversation. Lance was still busy calming down Hunk, and Shiro had disappeared somewhere above their heads. Keith swallowed his fears. It was now or never.

“I was thinking… the effects of the Love Bug’s bite can be reversed, right?”

“Yes, of course. The Barbatullian Leviosa changes the brain chemistry, but the actual consequences of its bite can―”

“But I was wondering…. Is there a bug on this planet that can... make you forget things?”

Slav squinted. “What kind of things?”

“Feelings.”

“You want to forget how to feel things?”

Keith shushed him. “No,” he whispered. “Not _everything_. Just… just what I feel for one person.”

Slav looked at him for what felt like hours. Then he used his tiny little hands to grip his arms and climb closer to him. And closer, and closer, until their faces were uncomfortably near. “You can’t create or erase feelings, you can just choose to ignore or accept them.”

“But the Lov— I mean the Barbatullian Leviosa _can_ create them.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what Coran said. If a Barbatullian bites you, you fall in love with the first person you see.”

Slav raised one of his index fingers, almost plucking out one of Keith’s eyes. “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean...?”

“The―”

“Guys! We should move!” Shiro was back from his mission, and Keith sprang upright.

“Everything alright?”

Shiro was unusually breathless. “I contacted the Castle. Allura is going to give us some air support with Blue’s sonar. She can update us on the spiders’ whereabouts.”

Hunk seemed to like the news. He rose to his feet to hug Shiro. “That’s great, man!” he said as Shiro’s boots touched ground again. And then his smile died: “Hey, what’s that on your neck?”

Shiro’s whole body stilled. He turned around slowly, afraid to make any sudden movements. And behold!: the Love Bug, peacefully resting on Shiro’s neck.

Lance audibly gulped. “Nobody move.”

But Keith did: he quietly got one of the empty jars from the backpack and carefully got closer to the Barbatullian Leviosa. The whole operation was actually easy to complete: he even screwed the lid close before the bug realized it had been captured.

Lance whooped, fist in the air: “We did it!” he cheered.

Keith grinned. “I can’t believe it was this eas—oh. Oh, no.” His smile fell.

Because Shiro was looking at Slav like Shiro had never looked at Slav before. Because the bug inside the jar lost its pretty blue color and died. Because Lance paled too, pointing at two little purple dots at the base of Shiro’s neck.

Keith had been fast. But the Love Bug had been faster.

 

• ◘ •

 

“This is not how I envisioned my Saturday afternoon going.”

“...How do you even know it’s a Saturday?”

“Garrison-issued clock! I had mine on me when we found the Blue Lion.”

“Oh.”

“It was my mother’s birthday last week.”

Keith, at the head of their little Paladin queue in the Forest, stopped walking to give Hunk a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, big man.”

“I’ll have to get her the best present ever after all this time away. Think she’ll like a sparkly bug?” The question was for Lance, a few feet behind them.

“I think she’ll like everything you get her.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she will. Maybe she’d even like some space goo.”

Keith and Lance shared a fond look; at least Hunk had finally calmed down. It was a good thing, considering they were going straight to the Flintula’s lair.

Without Shiro and Slav, of course. Keith had sent them back to the Lions with the bugs they had already retrieved. He didn’t want to risk having to deal with a lovesick Shiro during battle.

At least that’s what he thought until they finally entered the cave.

“What the cheese―”, Lance didn’t know where to aim his bayard.

The eggs were _everywhere_ : on the Forest’s floor, tethered inside huge vines, hanging from sticky nets that came down from the darkness above them. And some of them were _shaking_ , ready to give birth to some hybrids that would probably be very glad to have some Paladins for dinner. Or, you know, just chew on them.

Hunk looked dismayed. “I will never stop having nightmares about this hellish place, will I?”

Keith readied his sword and nodded towards the mouth of the cave. “This way. I found the Love Bugs not far from here the first time.”

They followed him, bayards aimed to the dark walls above their heads. Keith spotted the bugs soon after: three little butterflies crawling around a cracked egg. They were eating the unborn spawn the Flintula and the Mad Spider had produced.

“Okay, can I puke now?” Hunk made a belching sound. Lance, always the supportive friend, followed him soon after, emptying his stomach against the nearest cave wall.

Keith didn’t join their puking party only by sheer force of will. He swallowed. Careful not to startle the bugs, he guided them inside a jar, hands shaking. He waited a few ticks, and when the blue on their pretty wings didn’t fade, he started breathing again. “Done!” He turned around: “Let’s get out of here.”

That was, of course, the moment Allura’s voice buzzed through the comms to warn them: Mom and Dad were almost back home.

 

• ◘ •

 

They had almost made it back outside when, unseen and unheard, the Mad Spider reached for Lance. The creature threw him against the nearest wall, and he slipped in his own vomit, falling backward. Keith grimaced - not a pretty sight by a long shot.

“Lance!” Hunk turned his bayard to their attacker. He got three clear hits and managed to keep the Mad Spider at bay - until the Flintula came. Blind but still able to hear them scream, the second spider spit its acid with incredible accuracy: the substance doused Hunk’s bayard, rendering it useless in a matter of seconds. “Oh no.”

Keith cut into the fight - and into the Flintula’s belly - with a growing rage. He slid under the giant creature, never letting go of his weapon and ignoring the strain in his wrist and upper arms. The spider screeched in madness and pain as Keith’s sword cut its body in two.

“Careful!” someone screamed.

Keith rolled to the side, protecting the glass jar as the giant spider moved again, this time towering above him. Keith kicked his feet up.

There was a terrible sound: like sap dripping from a ripe fruit. And then the creature collapsed, a black mass of legs, fangs, and pale eyes coming down from above.

But it wasn’t over. As Keith lifted his gaze, the Mad Spider came back, summoned by the dying cries of its mate. It found him on his back, bayard now useless against its attack. Keith braced for the impending strike, and a shout echoed through the walls.

“Hey!” The Mad Spider turned its horrible head, focusing its attention somewhere in the depth of the cave. That was its first and last mistake.

Lance got the creature right in the cluster of its eyes: three sharp shots from a red rifle, and in the space of a breath, the Mad Spider was no more. But Keith wasn’t safe yet: a dead carcass was about to fall on him.

“Get away from there!”

Keith forced himself to move, but his body didn’t seem to respond to his will anymore. He was just too tired. Too spent.

It was Hunk who got him by the shoulder and saved him from getting crushed to death. Just as Keith was brought to safety, the second spider dropped on the ground, its lifeless body joining the mangled one of its mate.

This time, Keith puked his guts out.

“You alright, Mullet?”

Keith felt hot and feverish, and his body hurt all over. But he didn’t seem to have problems moving again. He looked down to the jar still resting in his lap. Inside, the Love Bugs were alive, their wings slightly glowing in the dim light of the cave. “Yeah,” he smiled at Lance. “We’re fine.”

Hunk sighed loudly. “Next Saturday I’m not getting out of bed. Seriously, don’t even try to wake me up, guys.” One of the eggs near his feet twitched suddenly. “Now let’s get out of here before these things hatch. _Please_.”

Keith and Lance had never agreed on something so quickly.

  


**.Day Twenty.**

 

Keith was feeling pretty good for someone who supposedly had only two vargas to live.

His headache was getting worse by the tick, sure; and there wasn’t a single muscle in his body that didn’t scream in vengeance, okay. But all in all it had been a successful mission. Except for _that_ thing, of course.

“Pass me the Kalovian mixer.”

“Yes, dear.”

“No, that’s a Kalovaisn mixer.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“I need the metal glass on your left.”

“Here it is, Slav-Slav.”

“I think I’m going to puke again.” Hunk sat down with a heavy heart.

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Pidge said. She was filming the whole thing, trying very hard not to laugh at Shiro’s pet names for his Slav-Slav. Matt had been helping her, but after his umpteenth  fit of giggles, Allura snapped and just threw him out of the room. (“Have some respect for the poor man!” “Yeah,” Coran added, “imagine how crushed Shiro will be when he’ll realize he will also need to take the antidote!” Pidge almost broke a rib then.)

Keith was simply too appalled to do anything but stare at the train wreck in front of him. To think he could have acted like that with Lance…. He shivered. A cold, uncaring shiver that had nothing to do with his fever. “Maybe someone should kill Shiro. Out of mercy.”

“You should do it, Keith.” Hunk said. “He would forgive you.”

Allura cleared her throat. “I am sure he will be fine.”

“He’s gonna need a lot of therapy, though.” Lance said, Chuchule and Chulatt happily dangling from his fingers. “Anyone else worried he might sabotage Slav’s experiment? You know, just not to let go of their burning love…?”

The Paladins fell into an uncomfortable silence. Coran saved them from their doubts: “No, it’s fine. Slav’s just making soup for the mice. He already brewed the antidote, it just needs a little more time to cool down.”

“Now pass me the salt.”

“Here you go, sweetheart.”

“And now the spork.”

“Yes, my space dakimakura!”

“You know what’s weird about this?” Lance had his serious face on.

Keith looked at him like he was stupid. “I don’t know. Everything?”

“Well, yeah. Exactly! Shiro is acting completely out of character! You never tried that nickname stuff with me, Mullet, except when you were trolling me. Even now you’re looking at me like I’m stupid!”

“Uhm…”

“But Shiro?! Look at him!” Everyone looked. “It’s like his IQ dropped one thousand points! He’s a Slav-Slave!”

Keith inadvertently nodded at that (blame the high fever), but had no reply to offer. Hunk, on the other hand, had a very terrifying theory of his own: “Maybe that’s just how Shiro is when he’s in love.”

Everyone turned to look at him. “Are you insane?" Keith said.

Allura smiled kindly at Hunk, but didn’t encourage his gross theory: “Shiro’s acting so unlike himself, I’m starting to suspect he’s been replaced by a dim-witted clone.”

“No need for such bleak hypothesis, Princess,” Coran took out his flashcards. “Slav revised my old notes on the Barbatullian Leviosa. Turns out, this is _exactly_ how someone affected by its bite should act.”

“What?” Keith felt his blood go cold. He had a bad feeling about this.

Coran smoothed his mustache. “The feelings of love brought on by the Love Bug’s bite is a mix of hopeless devotion and sappy declarations of love. Nothing to do with real enamourment.”

Ah! Keith blinked. _That_ was what Slav has been trying to tell him back on The Mud Planet. Real feelings can’t be faked. Great. Just great. Now Keith just had to hope Lance didn’t put two and two together and—

“But why isn’t _Keith_  acting like his brain turned into mush, then?”

_Crap._

“Yes,” Pidge grinned like the evil creature she was. “Why is that, Keith?”

“Uhm,” Keith very eloquently began. And then nothing. And nothing. And nothing for a few more ticks. Lance’s eyes grew more and more suspicious. “Uhm…”

And then Allura came to the rescue. “Maybe it’s due to his Galra heritage,” she reasoned. “After all, Keith’s reaction to the Love Bite clearly differs from Shiro’s.” To illustrate her point she nodded towards Slav’s station, where Shiro was currently busy telling Slav what a brave, handsome genius he was.

“Oh,” Lance said. “Makes sense.” He went back to playing with the mice, not a care in the universe.

Not for the first time, a heavy weight set into Keith’s belly. Would he ever stop lying to him?

 

• ◘ •

 

_Ding ding ding._

While the mice were eating their dinner, an alarm went off in the healing pods room. The antidote to the Love Bug’s bite was ready.

“Please, Shiro first”, Keith said.

Matt grinned like a lunatic Holt: “Yes, Slav. Do Shiro first.” Allura swatted him in the back of the head. Three times.

Shiro, of course, complained like a 5-year-old (“I don’t want to!”). And when Slav insisted he stay still, Shiro proudly pouted and declared the antidote wouldn’t work anyway because his love for Slav was pure and real and eternal and “It will never fade away!”

Slav just stared at his suitor. “No chances of that in _this_ reality,” and then he jabbed the syringe right into Shiro’s neck.

Keith counted to three, four, five…. By the time he reached ten, Shiro’s face had gone at least through a million different colors before settling for an ashen white. He slowly got up from his chair, walking silently to where Matt and Pidge were standing with their space-cameras, and held out his mechanical hand: “Recordings”, he said.

“But―”

“ _Recordings_.”

Recordings crashed.

“Backup copies too.”

“But―”

“ _Copies_!”

Backup copies destroyed.

Shiro looked at the siblings for a long, long moment. “This never happened,” he said. “ _Never_.”

Matt and Pidge nodded.

Everyone seemed ready to pretend the whole Slav-Slav incident had been a collective hallucination. And then Slav opened his genius mouth. “Actually, Shiro, in 0.088% of realities we are indeed lovers!”

It took Keith, Coran, Hunk, Matt _and_ Allura’s combined effort to take Shiro’s hands off Slav’s neck. In the end, Pidge had to bring him down with a tranquilizing dart. Even when he finally passed out, Shiro’s left eye kept twitching.

“I’m sure he will be fine,” Hunk said.

“Oh, I don’t know about him. But _I_ will need therapy for life after that startling revelation.” Pidge stated.

Lance sighed. “Can we go back to save Keith’s life now? He only has half a varga left!”

Allura, always-the-diplomat, smiled kindly. “Slav, is the second dose of the antidote ready?”

Slav looked at them like they were all crazy. “What second dose?”


	10. -Heartbeat-

**.Day Twenty (after the second attempt on Slav’s life).**

 

All things considered, Keith was taking things very well.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘THERE IS NO SECOND DOSE’?!” That wasn’t Keith screaming, but Lance.

“CALM DOWN, MAN!” And that was Hunk, currently holding Lance back and trying to keep him from shooting Slav with his bayard.

“EXPLAIN!” As usual, Pidge was looking for answers.

“You got me Three Barbatullian Leviosas. I needed two to make one dose of the antidote. It’s simple.” Slav looked eerily calm for a guy with a gun pointed at his head.

Allura gave up on smiling in favor of looking royally threatening. “But why didn’t you tell us you needed more Barbatullian Leviosas when you were still on the planet?”

“Because there was no need to get more.”

“THERE WAS NO NEED TO SAVE THE MULLET’S LIFE?!”

Slav frowned. He finally had the decency to look a little bit uncomfortable.  “Oh, this is one of the 4% of realities where I didn’t tell you _that_ either.”

“Tell us what?” Allura used her I-am-the-boss-so-you-better-talk voice.

Slav talked. “Keith doesn’t need an antidote for the Barbatullian Leviosa’s bite. He has never been bitten by one.”

Silence. Awful and total silence. Keith must have gotten a subscription to those.

Lance stopped struggling against Hunk’s hold, and Hunk let him go on the spot.

Keith found his voice again, for a “What?" that felt choked and unsure even to his own ears.

Slav went back to his table and retrieved a familiar-looking book: it was the notebook where Lance had taped the bug that had bitten Keith. “ _This_ ,” he explained, “is a Barbatullian Leviosà. Very similar to the Barbatullian Leviosa. Very easy for amateurs to mix them up,” he threw a glance at Coran, who put up an affronted look.

Keith’s head was spinning. Lance, however, seemed to have grasped the situation pretty clearly. “Keith is not dying?”

“Oh, yes he is.” Slav said. “That is one of the things the two Barbatullians bites have in common: they can be lethal. The Barbatullian Leviosà can also cause mood swings and violent headaches. But there’s a different antidote for that,” he handed Keith a small vial of red liquid. “I made this from the third Barbatullian Leviosa’s antennae and the wings of the Merthur Papillis I captured.”

So _that_ was what Slav had been doing with those small butterflies, uh?

Keith drank the whole vial dumbly, his mind on autopilot.

To Slav’s credit, his headache was gone before he could even swallow the last drop. Numbness remained, but Keith suspected it had a different origin now. “Thank you,” he muttered.

“So… Keith has never been in love with me?" Lance’s voice was all wrong. Raspy and angry and hurt. “Keith…” he called. “You have _never_ been in love with me?”

Keith could feel Lance’s gaze on him, but he couldn’t find the strength to look away from the floor. Everyone else was just standing there, their silence engulfing him like a dark shadow.

“You were making fun of me?!”

Keith snapped his head up at that. Lance’s eyes were glistening with unshed tears. His knuckles were white, hands balled into fists.

_Lance…_ Keith tried to say his name, but his lips wouldn’t even open.

“Why would you make fun of me like that?!”

Hunk came closer to them. “Lance―”

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Lance screamed. “Just don’t try and defend him this time, Hunk! Just—!” He was so angry he couldn’t even talk anymore.

“Lance…”, Keith tried. But  Lance was already gone, the hollow sound of his steps echoing in the silence of the room.

_I was not making fun of you,_ Keith thought. _I was making a fool of myself._


	11. -87%-

**.Keith stopped counting.**

 

Keith had known from the beginning this whole Love Bug thing would have ended in a disaster. But he hadn’t expected it to hurt this much.

He had dealt with Shiro’s disappointment before; so, this time, when Shiro found him in his room, Keith told him _everything_. From the beginning to the end, embarrassment to shame, without skipping a single quiznak nor a single time he scratched his itching neck. He talked non-stop for what felt like forever: facts, feelings and failures. He didn’t even leave out the parts about the stupid pseudo-erotic books he used to read and the videogame tricks he forced himself to learn because they made Lance smile.

And he said, without crying (because Keith didn’t deserve to cry): “I know it’s all my fault. I really fucked up this time.”

Shiro just stood there, silent and waiting. It was that silence that made Keith shed the first tear; ‘cause that’s how Shiro punished you. He made you look inside yourself: that was his twisted way of letting you know that yes, he was angry, but he was also disappointed. Shiro had put his trust in someone who didn’t deserve it, and now that was clear. There was no need to waste words when there was no solution to― Shiro’s arms closed around him.

Keith felt his whole body go still. It took him a while to return that careful embrace and hide his face in Shiro’s chest. When he did, the dam broke. He started sobbing, once again feeling like a lost child looking for his place in the world.

Shiro’s hand went up and down his back, forgiving unforgivable things. “It’s going to be okay.”

Keith didn’t believe him. But he still let himself hope.

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith’s coping process was made of three simple things: sleep, food, and fights with the Gladiator.

_Brutal_ fights with the Gladiator, to be more precise: clashes that left him with angry scratches and blossoming bruises, almost passed on the floor, breathless and unable to think. Which is what he wanted, by the way: when he thought, he thought about Lance, and right now thinking about Lance was not an option.

“You need to talk to him,” said the others. “You can fix this”, said the others. And then came the cold, harsh truth: “We need Voltron.”

Well, maybe Voltron needed a new Paladin. One in a new Black armor - or a Red one. The color didn’t matter, as long as the problem got solved - as long as _Keith_ was gone. But Keith didn’t want to be gone. Not when he finally had found his place, and with it the family he had always wanted.

Pidge found him passed out on the floor. “You’re killing yourself,” she said.

“I’m keeping myself alive,” Keith told her. Fighting was the only thing he was good at; he would not give that up. Pidge understood, as far as someone could have.

“You should still talk to Lance,” she said after a while.

Keith took down another Gladiator, hands itching under his gloves. Yeah. He should have talked to Lance.

 

• ◘ •

 

The thing was, and maybe someone noticed… Well. Keith was not good with words. He wasn’t that good with thoughts, either. Sometimes (and maybe he already mentioned this?) it took him a while (and too long) to figure stuff out. And sometimes his mouth said things before his brain could stop him from ruining his own life. Like the time he had told Lance he had beautiful blue eyes and put this whole thing into motion.

So Keith didn’t want to talk to Lance, or _with_ Lance, or _about_ Lance until he knew exactly what he would say. He couldn’t ruin this thing. This thing that was bigger than him, or Lance, or him-and-Lance.

But the more he hit the Gladiator, the more words seemed meaningless. And the more the Gladiator hit _him_ , the more talking with, to, or about Lance sounded like a bad idea. A terrible idea.

Until Slav found him.

“Go away, Slav,” Keith snarled.

“I am!”

Well, that was excellent news.

Keith took a deep breath and told the Gladiator to take a break: “End training sequence.” He turned to Slav, who looked like he was about ready to go climb the space equivalent of the Himalayas: a backpack taller than he was, a suitcase with several books piled on top of it, and three glass jars with different kinds of bugs and flowers inside. To Keith’s relief, there was no Barbatullian-like butterfly in sight. He was surprised, though, that Slav hadn’t asked Shiro to be his personal mule and he told the alien just that.

“There was a 96.8% chance that that request would have ended in my demise.”

“Oh.” Keith easily believed that.

Slav fidgeted with several of his many hands. “I am leaving to help the Blade of Marmora with several projects.”

Keith didn’t say anything.

“Before leaving I wanted to thank you for your help with my research with bugs―”

Keith gritted his teeth in irritation.

“—And apologize.”

“Uh?” Irritation gone, confusion in place.

Slav cleared his throat. “Contemplating the odds of a possible outcome coming true in a pre-determined subset of realities can influence the odds of a certain reality re-shaping themselves to adjust that particular aspect of itself. Hence the confusion about what is true and what could be true.”

Keith blinked stupidly. Again: “Uh?”

“You’ll figure it out!” Slav half-shouted as he started to leave the room.

Keith was sure that this time the alien was trolling him; there was a 200% chance that Slav had spent too much time with the Holts.

He was about to resume his training when Slav’s head and index fingers popped up from behind the door. “One last thing!”

Keith sighed: “What now?”

“In 87% of the realities you fall in love with Lance first, Lance falls in love with you too.”

Keith froze. “...Is ours one of those realities?”

“I don’t know,” Slav said. “You should probably find out.”

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith rushed out of the training room without even bothering to pick up his jacket. Or take a shower.

He looked for Lance in his room, in Hunk’s room, on the observation deck, in the healing pods room, in the kitchen, in the broom closet on the second floor, and even in some rooms of the Castle he hadn’t been before.

“Lance isn’t in a really talkative mode right now, man,” Hunk told him from under the sink. He was in Allura’s bathroom, building a little shower for the mice. Keith guessed tinkering was Hunk’s second favorite way of coping with things.

“Can you hand me that screwdriver?”

Keith, breath heavy and cheeks red from his Lance-hunt, handed Hunk what could have been either a screwdriver or a blowtorch. He wasn’t really paying attention. “He’s not talking to _anyone_?”

“Ooh, here’s the right tube! Uh? Oh, no. Lance is basically ignoring everyone.”

“You as well?”

“Yeah. He told me I can be too nosy for my own good. That is so _not_ true, man. But - quiznak these screws are tight! - but we should give him space anyway. Lance just wants to be alone.  You know how he gets when― Keith? Hey, Keith!”

But Keith was already gone, running towards the only place in the whole universe where a Paladin of Voltron could be really and truly alone.

 

• ◘ •

 

“Let me in!”

…

“Come on, we need to talk!”

…

“I’m not going anywhere until we talk!”

…

“Listen―”

“No listening!” Lance’s scream echoed through the empty hangar, followed by some kind of cheesy Latin-sounding song blasting full force through Red’s speakers. Keith actually had to cover his ears. That, of course, was exactly what Lance wanted. “Headphones on! Can’t even hear you!” The Blue― _Red_ (Purple?) Paladin let Keith know from inside the cockpit.

Fifteen minutes of screaming and  begging-Lance-to-come-out later, Red’s shield was still up. Keith groaned as an obnoxious singer sang about love and betrayal and… monkeys? _Ugh, whatever._

Keith squared his shoulders. “Red,” he called. He didn’t even bother screaming: he knew the Lion would hear him even if he whispered. “I know he’s hurt―” Red’s growl stopped him. Keith squared his shoulders. “I know I hurt him. I can fix it. I promise.”

He felt Red’s eyes on him. She never fully severed their bond when he took over the role of Black Pilot. He could still feel her presence, in the back of his mind: quieter than before, yet there, sending him images and thoughts at random times. And in that moment she wanted something from him; something more than the reassurance that he wanted to fix things with Lance.

Keith touched the energy shield, eyes closed, and suddenly understood. “I will be fine, too,” he smiled.

The shield went down.

“Good kitty.”

 

• ◘ •

 

Keith rushed inside, climbing into the cockpit from the hatch on Red’s head.

Lance didn’t hear him. He was twirling around in the pilot’s chair, those awful green headphones he had permanently borrowed from Pidge firmly planted on his head. He was wearing his civilian clothes, bayard resting on the dashboard and eyes closed. Not like opening them would have given him a better view of the hangar: the windows had been darkened. By Lance’s own request, or by Red’s initiative in a renewed effort to conceal Keith’s whereabouts, he couldn’t tell.

Lance stopped spinning and crossed his legs, right foot fidgeting against the floor. “Is he still out there?” he asked Red.

Keith took a deep breath.

The awful Latin music suddenly stopped.

“No, I’m not.”

Lance jolted and let out an outraged gasp, sitting on his knees on the pilot chair. “You!” his hands grasped the headrest as he looked up. “Red, why did you let him in? I thought I was your pilot now!”

Something in the way he said that made Keith’s stomach sink. He took a couple of steps forward. “Don’t take it out on her. It’s me you’re mad with.”

Lance didn’t need to be told twice. He got rid of Pidge’s headphones with a violent thud. There was actual fury in his eyes. “Of course I’m mad at you! _You_ _―_ ”, Lance bit his lips and looked away, like he didn’t even know where to start.

Keith let him take his time.

Lance used that as an opening: “You wanted to talk and now you’re not saying anything.”

Keith shrugged. “It seemed like you needed to shout at me for a while. You can, if you want.”

Lance moved his right hand on his left elbow: a half-hug that also seemed to put a physical wall between him and Keith. He looked tired. More tired than Keith had ever seen him before.

“I shouted at you plenty in my head for the last few vargas.”

“Did it help?”

“Not really. But imagining to shoot you in the head did.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I―”

“Why did you do it?”

“Lance―”

“I thought about it. A lot. And I know I’m not good with this stuff. Especially with you. But I can’t figure out why you would pretend to like me just to―”

“I do like you!”

“If you did you would have never done any of this!” The fire was back inside Lance. “I thought we were becoming friends! That we were good. Why would you let a prank go this far if―”

“It wasn’t a prank! _It wasn’t!_ ” This time, Keith raised his voice. “I wasn’t making fun of you!”

“Then that’s even worse!”

“What?!”

Lance balled his hands into fists. “You thought I was so pathetic, so homesick and in need of comfort, that you actually had to― _pretend_ to be in love with me?!”

“Lance, I never thought you were pathetic. Never, I―”

Another shout. “Then _why_! Uh? If it wasn’t a prank and it wasn’t pity, why did you do it?”

Keith stumbled back. The answer was simple, and he had already given it, more than once. He was sure that every time he looked at Lance, that answer could be read in the softness of his eyes and the slight crease of his lips. Every time but right now, when what he could give Lance was just stunned fear. He had never been good with words. Now he couldn’t even find the wrong ones.

In the back of Keith’s mind, Red let out an angry snarl.

“Lance―”

But Lance was already too far away. “It doesn’t matter,” he looked down again and then straight into Keith’s eyes. “I’ve already made up my mind.”

“About what?”

Red was panicking now, and Keith wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer to his question.

“I’m leaving.” Lance said it in a voice Keith had never heard him use before. Calm, distant, controlled. _Defeated_.

“What?”

Lance sat down again, this time on the armrest of the pilot chair. Like he had already given up on Red, but wasn’t really ready to let her go. “I did the math again”, he showed Keith five fingers that became four, then three and then two. And then there was only one. “I’ll never be able to form Voltron again, not with you. I was always the spare Paladin anyway.”

There were millions of things Keith could have said at this point. That Lance couldn’t leave; that he needed to stop putting himself down; that if one of them didn’t deserve to be on team Voltron that wasn’t Lance. But Keith didn’t say any of that. Before he could think, he had already thrown the literal first punch.

It wasn’t a strong blow (oh, it wasn’t): Keith was tired from all his training with the Gladiator, and his legs were unsteady. But Lance hadn’t expected the fist that hit him square in the jaw, and he stumbled back, lower lip bleeding. Keith hold his breath, dread growing inside of him.

The worst part was that Lance didn’t even fight back; and when he talked, it was with that same cold, uncaring voice as before. “That’s how you solve everything, right Keith? Rush into things. No plan needed. Just trust your guts and maybe punch something along the way. Who cares if someone’s pretty face gets messed up!”

“And that’s how _you_ solve _your_ problems!” Now Keith was pissed too. “When you can’t deal with things, you turn into an obnoxious clown. And when that stops working, you somehow make everything your fault and run away like a coward!”

Lance cleaned the blood from his lips with the back of his hand. “So am I some kind of joker loser to you?”

Keith should have shut up. He knew that. His nails were digging into his palms; his breath was coming out in angry puffs. He should have stopped. But Lance was looking at him with such disgust that his own rage became the only thing that mattered. “You are acting like one right now.”

Lance smiled. He actually smiled. “Yeah, well. I guess that makes two of us then.”

Keith was slammed back into reality. He hit the brakes. “I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s the thing, Keith: you never mean _anything_. You’re too scared to.”

He had no reply for that. Lance was right, and they both knew it.

“I’m telling the others now. About me stepping down. I’ll…  I’ll help Coran with the Castle, or something. Whatever Allura needs me to do.” Lance got Pidge’s headphones back, but left Red’s bayard right where it was, on the dashboard.

Keith started to panic. Even he couldn’t have fucked up this bad. He couldn’t.

“Or maybe I could follow Slav around. He probably needs a bodyguard anyway, right?”

“Lance―”

Lance looked at him one last time, all anger gone. “You can pilot Red again, she’ll be happy.”

“Lance, don’t―”

Lance started walking out of the Lion. And Keith knew that if Lance left now, there was nothing he could do to fix things this time. “Wait―”

As he rushed forward, two things happened at the same time: Lance stepped out of the cockpit and Red roared, tipping her head downwards and making them both lose their balance. When her growling stopped, Keith found himself with his back against the dashboard. Lance was spread out on the floor near the pilot seat.

“I guess she wants to keep you,” Keith said.

Lance got on his feet. “Wouldn’t know why.”

“Because she loves you, you idiot. And I do too.”

A flash of anger. “Don’t start this again.”

“I’m not starting anything. I’m telling you. You say I’m impulsive and I rush into things without a plan. And you’re right. That’s why you can’t go: I’m a better Paladin… a better person when you’re around. You’re my impulse control. I _need_ you.”

There. He said it. Coming out and coming clean: done! Shiro would be proud. There was only one tiny little problem…

Lance still didn’t believe him.

“Mullet. I know that, the first time, the search for a new Paladin didn’t go smoothly, but Shiro is back now and you don’t need to―”

“I am in love with you, Lance. For real.”

A beat.

“What?”

Keith took a deep breath. “I was... already in love with you when the Love Bug bit me.”

“It wasn’t really a Love B―”

“We didn’t know that. And when Coran told us what its bite could do, I was afraid you’d find out how I felt.”

“Because you were afraid the others would make fun of you.”

_Oh, this boy. Really?_ Keith rolled his eyes: “No, Lance. I was afraid _you_ would make fun of me… or maybe even pity me.”

“What?!”, aaand Lance’s trademark high-pitched screech was back. “Why would I ever make fun of something like that? What am I? Prince _Loser_?” He had an outraged look on his face - a pout, eyes round and bright -  that made him look so… _Lance_.

“No, you’re certainly not Lotor.” Keith felt the warmth of a blush spreading around his cheeks. “And I’m not ashamed of what I feel for you.” But he kept his eyes firmly on the floor.

“Why…” Lance cleared his throat. “Why would you even, uhm, like me that way?”

_He’s got to be kidding._

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Keith snapped his head up. “You’re not asking me that!”

“I think I… just… did?”

That shut Keith up. Again. For a whole different reason. “I―” He opened his mouth. Closed it. Repeated from point one.

Lance was getting antsy, like he was starting to think Keith was still lying to him.

So Keith told him the answer he had found during the sleepless night he spent pondering that exact same problem. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Lance used the eyebrow of doom on him. “You don’t know why you like me.”

“Look...” Keith wet his lips. “I know what you want me to say.”

“You do?”

“Yes! You want me to talk about puppies and rainbows, and - I don’t know - _butterflies in my stomach_ ―”

“I no longer trust butterflies like I used to.”

“—And all those stupid ‘I want to be with you forever’ stuff. But the truth is, Lance: I don’t _want_ to wake up everyday and see you drooling on your pillow.”

“Cheese. Thanks, Mullet. Way to win a guy’s heart.”

“And I certainly don’t want to spend every minute of the day with you. We’d both go insane!”

“Okay, that’s true.”

“But you’re Lance!” Keith said.

“I am Lance,” Lance repeated in a daze.

Keith put his rant on hold to run an hand through his hair. Red’s soothing presence encouraged him to go on. _You are doing well, Keithten._

“You are Lance,” Keith said. “And you make me _feel_ like no one else can. And that’s all there is to it.”

Lance said nothing. He just kept staring at Keith, confusion filling his blue eyes. (The most beautiful blue eyes.) Keith looked away again. He knew that Lance needed more than that; but that was all he could give: and if that was just enough to make Lance stay, then―

“Mullet...?”

“Yeah?”

“Just so you know, those trolls out there are gonna give us so much shit for this.”

Keith’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you m―”

Lance kissed him.

Lance. Kissed. _Him_.

It wasn’t even a good kiss, as far as Keith was concerned. Lance’s mouth felt weird against his own. Lance’s fingers kept showing up in weird places along Keith’s back, torso and bare arms, like they didn’t know where they should be. And Lance’s nose. _Ugh_. Lance’s nose bumped against Keith’s, and Keith had to tilt his head if he wanted to breath freely. When he did, Lance took a step back: his lower lip had started bleeding again. The faint tang of blood was between them.

Keith raised his right arm, and brushed his tingling fingers against Lance’s lips. “I’m sorry.”

Lance took his hand. “We need to work on our communication skills. _And_ on our kissing skills,” he moved his mouth against Keith’s fingertips.

“That’s an understatement.” Keith entwined their fingers together.

“So..., just to be clear: you’re in love with me.”

Keith laughed. “Yeah, Lance. I’m in love with you. I think I made that abundantly clear.”

Lance bumped their foreheads together. “And I,” he said, looking into Keith’s eyes, “am in love with you.”

Keith blushed. Again. Worse than ever before. “You are?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Yes,” Keith smiled. Then he saddened. “I thought you liked Allura.”

Lance spluttered. “Of course I _like_ Allura! Only Zarkon wouldn’t like Allura. But she’s, like, my brother!”

“You mean sister.”

“Nope. She totally feels like a bro to me.”

A headshake. “You are so weird,” Keith whispered.

Lance kissed him on the nose.

And then elsewhere.

_87%,_ Slav had said. And Keith knew now: theirs was definitely _one of those realities_. The ones where they could be happy, if they only let themselves be.

 


	12. -Trolls in Space-

Later, when they got back to the hangar, they found Pidge tapping away on her computer and Hunk sitting at her feet, tinkering with a very small shower head.

“Not even pretending you’re not spying on us, eh?” Lance asked them.

“We debated on that,” Hunk said.

“We decided it would have been a waste of our precious energy,” Pidge added.

Hunk turned to take a good look at them: at Lance’s happy grin, and Keith’s shy smile. He chuckled. “I take it it all went well in there?”

“Let’s just say we can form Voltron again, my Pal pals!” Lance’s finger guns came with a wink this time.

Pidge wrinkled her nose. “Ew, gross. The Red Lion really let you two do _stuff_ in there.”

Keith said “Yes” at the same time Lance let out an exasperated “No!”

Pidge looked at them.

They looked at each other.

Hunk facepalmed.

Lance cleared his throat. “Keith. Kit-Kat, love of my space life… I think you are way underestimating the twelve-year-old perviness and what her sentence implied here.”

Light bulb. Light bulb on Keith’s head! And then he was blushing _again_. “Oh. ...Oh! We… we did not do―. We―”

“I am not twelve!” Pidge protested.

Lance grinned down at her. “Could have fooled me.”

Pidge ignored the taunt in favor of stealing her headphones back. “Seriously, don’t be all gross in front of me from now on. I know how to kill you. Slowly.”

Those weren’t empty threats: Keith remembered all-too-well how Pidge kicked all of their asses - even Shiro’s -  when they had been looking for the Yelexian Pearl.

“We won’t be gross in front of anyone,” Lance promised. “I don’t share. And I don’t think Keith’s heart could take all your envious staring anyway.”

Keith, who had already started praying for the ground to swallow him whole, put forward his best pout. “Shut up, Cargo Pilot.”

“Make me, Dropout.”

Keith did. With his fist. He closed it around the front of Lance’s shirt and dragged his unbearable idiot to the closest healing pod.

  
• ◘ •

 

“I can’t believe we are in an abusive relationship”, Lance told him once he got out of his cryo sleep, lip fully healed.

Keith rolled his eyes. “The only abusive thing about this relationship is your constant whining.”

“And I can’t believe you fooled me with all of those cheesy lines at the beginning.”

“You… you didn’t like that, right?”

Lance laughed. “What? You being all lovey-dovey? Quiznak, no. I like my Keith broody.”

Keith frowned. “I’m not―”

Lance gave him a look.

“Fair enough,” he sighed. He watched in silence - definitely _not_ brooding - as Lance put his clothes back on. “Hey, Lance…”

“Uhn?”

Keith bit on his lip. “You still think that this will be dangerous?”

Lance stopped halfway through buttoning his pants. “Mullet. We just talked about this: you need to be better with your words. What would be dangerous?”

Keith sighed. “Our… relationship. You said you didn’t want me to put myself at risk just because I was in love with you. And I don’t want you to do that, either.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh’.”

Lance let his pants fall on the floor. He took a while to find his answer. “Yes. I think it will be dangerous,” he admitted.

Keith’s heart sank. Mostly because he knew Lance was right: Keith himself had been very close to give up his feelings for him - having them bug-erased! - because of that very same belief. Pidge and Kolivan had told him this was a bad idea. And yet… and yet he…

“Then maybe we―”

Lance stopped him with a small caress on his cheek. Then he brought his right hand to Keith’s chin, while his left found its place on Keith’s arm.

He made Keith feel vulnerable, without the shield provided by his jacket.

“I think our relationship will be dangerous, hard, and complicated”, Lance said, voice steady and eyes unwavering. “But I also think we will be awesome together. And we _deserve_ something awesome.”

Keith hold Lance’s gaze, arms slipping around his waist. He dared to smile a small, hopeful smile. “We have Red’s approval at least.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Lance let out an exasperated sigh. “Red and Blue ganged up on me.”

“They did?!”

“Yeah. And Allura too, by the way”

Keith’s laughter was half incredulous.

“They kept telling me to man up. All three of them! ‘Just do it, Lance!’, ‘Be daring, Lance!’, ‘Go have your hope and dreams crushed, Lance!’”

“How horrible,” Keith deadpanned. Those thumbs-up Allura gave him made a lot of more sense now. He bent forward, so that his forehead could rest on Lance’s shoulder. Softly, seriously, without that hint of mirth in his voice: “I will fuck up again. You know it, right?”

“Then we will fix things again,” Lance said. “Also, mind your language, Keef. There are mice present.” He tilted his head towards the door, where Chuchule and Platt were waving at them, little towels resting on their shoulders.

Keith waved back, never leaving the warmth of Lance’s embrace. “Uhm. Hi.” The mice’s inquisitive stare made him feel a bit flustered. He cleared his throat and addressed them the best the could: “What I meant was… I don’t know how to love very well, but I will do my best not to quiznak up this... relationship… thing… with Lance.”

The mice did a weird clapping thing with their paws. Keith was glad they approved his new life choices.

“Awww, look at my Keith being all proper and stuff!” Lance cooed.

“You know, for someone who says he doesn’t like cheesy stuff, you’re being overly cheesy right now.”

“I never said I didn't like cheesy stuff!” Lance scrunched his nose, as the mice scurried off to try their brand-new shower. “I said they’re very out of character _for you_. You can still expect The Lance to serenade you!”

Keith paled. “Not in front of Shiro,” he begged. “And absolutely not with those terrible Latin songs.”

Lance raised an eyebrow in confusion. “What Latin songs?”

“The ones you were listening to in Red.”

“...That was a mixtape Pidge made for me ages ago! Please tell me you didn’t mix up Spanish and Italian again.”

Keith was about to reply that he knew the difference very well, thank you very much, when Pidge’s outraged scream reached them from two floors down. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE MICE TOLD YOU LANCE WASN’T WEARING ANY PANTS?!”

Hunk’s sigh followed suit. “Boy, he’s moving fast!”

Lance started shaking in laughter. “I told you dealing with those two would have been _hell_.”

Keith hid his own grin against Lance’s chest and kissed his collarbone. “Worth it,” he whispered.

Yeah. Nothing wrong with a little hell. Not if Keith got Lance in return.

 


	13. -CONGRATULATIONS!-

“ _How_.”

“Dedication, Pidge. A lot of dedication.”

“Dedication doesn’t make you beat unbeatable games, Lance.”

“Then I guess the game wasn’t that unbeatable, after all.” The _CONGRATULATIONS!_ screen was enough proof of that.

“There must be a bug. There’s no other explanation.”

Keith snorted from the couch. “Let’s not blame everything on bugs now.”

“But some of us _like_ blaming bugs,” Matt elbowed Shiro in the ribs.

“I have my reasons!”

“Very good reasons,” Allura agreed.

Keith bit the inside of his cheek. “Which reminds me…  Lance, we still have to send a thank-you letter to Slav.”

“Maybe I could knit him a big sweater!”

“You know, Kolivan would appreciate a Blade-themed one.”

“Oooh, right!”

Shiro looked pained. “Why would you thank Slav for anything anyway?”

“We have our reasons,” Keith said.

“Very good reasons?” Hunk asked.

“Good enough reasons,” Keith grinned at Lance, who noticed something on the screen and hurried to press the SAVE button.

Coran leaned in. “Is it normal to beat games when you’ve only completed 87% of them?”

Keith grinned. “87% is a good percentage.”

“ _It’s a bug’s fault_ ,” Pidge insisted.

“Nah.” Lance snuggled closer to Keith. “It’s the Power of Love, Pidge. Just the Power of Love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done! :D
> 
> I just wanna thank again:  
> \- _you_ , for sticking to the end of this story: I hope you had fun reading it, even if you wanted to strangle Slav at some point!  
> \- everyone who left/will leave comments, kudos and added this to their bookmarks. It really means a lot to me.  
> \- The Nee, again, for putting up with my typos and Englishfails (I swear half of those "feets" were Mort's fault!).
> 
> Let's all Klance on ♥~


End file.
